After the Fire
by Dunno12345
Summary: Praimfaya is gone, and with it six years. Only a patch of the Earth Bellamy and the others have known has managed to grow through the ash. Perfect timing, because this is the day they return. While hoping to find Octavia, he finds other things as well, clues that force him to face an incredible truth, one that might as well unravel him: Clarke Griffin is alive.
1. Returned

**All right, so this will be a series of one-shots for scenes that I can't incorporate into my other fanfiction but scenes that I personally find believable. They will only take place after Praimfaya. I apologize in advance, because this one has angst and was emotionally trying for me to write. I'd like to have this one in two or three parts, though. Anyway, please review!**

He's waited two-thousand, two-hundred-one days for this moment.

Three-hundred-sixty-five more than necessary, but it's over. The waiting is done. No more falling asleep beneath a metal ceiling. No more breathing recycled air. No more drinking recycled water. He gets the real thing again, only this time it isn't falling to a strange, foreign world.

It's coming home.

"Initiating launch in ten . . . nine," Raven's voice fills the small space and Bellamy's hands tighten over the straps that are secured around him. He leans back and shuts his eyes, heart a raucious thing inside his chest.

The others surround him in a semi-circle but they are as quiet as he is, as if a single noise that isn't Raven has the power to shatter this reality, and they'll once again wake up to find they have a thousand days left to go.

When Raven reaches five, she stops counting. Bellamy opens his eyes to find her looking at him. "You ready for this?" she asks.

Bellamy almost laughs, but he can't celebrate yet. Not until he knows for certain that the others are still waiting for them. His gaze doesn't break from hers. "I've been ready."

She smiles, finger over the ejection pad. "Then let's do this." She presses it.

For a moment, there's nothing.

Then their small ship seems to drop like a rock, shoving Bellamy against his restraints. One strap lacerates his neck but he doesn't feel it. All he can think of is the movement of the ship and the planet waiting below, and how pissed off he'll be if the landing kills him before Earth manages to.

* * *

It was better the first time around.

That's his initial thought, but it's bumped out a moment later, when the echo of his heart stops pounding like drums in his ears and he can actually breathe again. He coughs. On what he doesn't know. "Everyone all right?" his voice bounces around the cramped quarters.

"I'm good," Raven responds.

"Same," calls Monty and Harper.

"Emori? Murphy? Echo?"

"Fine."

"Is it . . . always like that?" asks Emori, and though the grounder would never admit it, Bellamy can hear the shaking in her voice.

Murphy helps her out of her restraints. "The last time wasn't as bad," he says, echoing Bellamy's thoughts.

"That's what happens when you have one less thruster to work with," Raven replies as she climbs out of her own.

Bellamy doesn't even feel his hands moving, but somehow he gets out of his restraints before the others. His first step almost makes him fall back into his seat; it's as if someone's replaces his boots with blocks of lead. His jaw tightens and he forces his legs forward, to the doors.

They stand there, a band of seven, and Bellamy looks them each in the eye. An odd sense of deja-vu floods him. Though it feels as if the old dropship fell from another life, he suddenly remembers it as if it were yesterday. He's seen Earth, but he hasn't seen _this_ Earth. He hopes it won't be too bad. He hopes, this time, they'll make it better.

Murphy raises a hand to the switch that will open the doors. Bellamy braces himself.

But Murphy doesn't press it. Instead, he gestures to Bellamy. "Care to do the honors?"

This time he can't help it; Bellamy smirks. The others sidle over as he takes Murphy's spot, lifting his own hand to the switch.

" _The air could be toxic."_

" _If the air's toxic, then we're all dead anyway."_

And he presses it, too aware of the missing piece that makes a usually dull ache suddenly flare back to life.

* * *

The sun burns so intensely that for a moment, Bellamy is sure that the world is still saturated in radiation. But the burning doesn't grow worse. Instead it recedes, long enough for Bellamy to blink through it and catch a glimpse of green.

The air is pulled from him as he takes in the sight of trees. _Trees._ And the smell. His head spins, intoxicated by the world, his senses tripping over one another, battling to the front.

He's returned to the ground, to a place that isn't as broken as his nightmares had originally led him to believe.

Murphy sighs, drawing Bellamy's fragmented attention to him. "We're back."

And for the first time in what feels like two-thousand, two-hundred-one days, Bellamy smiles.

"All right, as much as I know we all want to go straight to the bunker," Raven looks pointedly at him, golden sunlight dancing over her lackluster clothes, "let's check in with Becca's lab. Maybe some of the equipment there still works and we can reestablish contact with the others. Get an idea of what's gone down the last six years."

"Becca's lab," Bellamy repeats. He swallows. No, he doesn't want to go there, but he will. He'll face the darkest corners of his mind if it means getting his sister back. If it simply means confirming that she's alive at all.

Raven's eyes soften a fraction. "It should be just a little over a mile south." She doesn't ask him if he's ready. She doesn't ask if he wants to stay. Because she knows he's not, and that he won't.

She just nods and turns away as they start. Though they are a family and Raven has been a constant beside him in space, it's different on the ground. Down here, he was accustomed to someone else walking beside him, and he can't help but crave a phantom's company now.

* * *

He sees the satellite first. After walking the better quarter of the day, the hill they've begun to crest reveals it. A part of it has broken off. The dish is gone, its metal warped. But he remembers it, and the sight stirs that ache again, until Bellamy has to look away.

It isn't until they've crossed over when the lab swims into view, grimier, but still intact. Bellamy pauses a moment and takes a deep breath. Though it's green here, too, the air seems to taste of ash.

Him and Raven are the first to reach the doors, with the others just a few meters behind. On closer inspection, Bellamy sees that there's a crack in one of the windows, but no damage beyond that. It's odd, how quickly old instincts have come soldiering back. His alertness doubles when Raven prepares to open the door; a part deep inside of him doesn't want to know what lies behind it.

Yet, when Raven goes to open the door, she finds she doesn't have to; it's already open.

Bellamy and her share a glance. "Maybe radiation levels deactivated the magnetic locks," she says, and eyes him a moment longer before stepping inside.

With clenched fists, Bellamy follows after.

The lab appears the same, save for a few screens missing. It still feels sterile and empty, a little like the Ark. Against his efforts, Bellamy's eyes drift to the far left of the lab, where the rocket once rested. Where they waited. Where he should've waited longer.

"Hey." Raven's voice pulls him back. She touches his arm. "You okay?" She asks even though she knows, to give him the opportunity to either confide in her, or the chance to recollect himself once more.

He clears his throat and nods. "Yeah. I'll go check the rest of the place." Because it's harder to be there than he thought it would be.

"Good idea."

Bellamy leaves up the stairs, quickly but not too quickly. He passes by a smaller room with a steel table, office-like.

" _You inspire people, because of this."_ A small hand over his heart. " _But the only way to make sure we survive is to use this too."_ A finger at his temple.

" _I've got you for that."_

He hastens his pace just a little, until he's reached the far door that he remembers led into the kitchen.

Once there, he stands for a moment, releasing a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Then he raises his chin and takes in this place, too. Also undamaged, also more sterile-looking. The sink still has dishes in it. The cupboards still have random miscellany in them, and he supposes they just didn't have the space or storage to bring it with them. But the place feels different, somehow. Unnerved, Bellamy shakes his head and walks down the hall, the sound of his boots echoing around him.

Something on the kitchen table catches his eye and he strides over to it. His eyes narrow at sheets of paper he finds stacked there. He pinches the corner of one. Flips it over.

At first, the only thing that strikes him is that it is a drawing of a little girl. That's it. A little girl he does not know. Then he stills as he remembers, and he realizes the only person who could've drawn such a thing.

It's like he's grabbed a bomb, and Bellamy can do nothing but stand and stare. The six years seem to both expand and dissolve, growing and disappearing at once. It feels so long ago and yet not long enough to have prepared him for being so close to her once more. The closest he will ever be to her again.

In a shaky breath, Bellamy sets down the page and flips over the next. Again, that breath catches. It's of the little girl again, but instead of a portrait, she stands in a field of small flowers, gathering them in a dark hoodie.

Bellamy brings the drawing closer, trying to remember. When did she draw these? When did she have the time? Was it while she stayed here after they'd dropped off the fuel? Bellamy puts it down. _That must be it._ He flips over the next drawing, another of the girl. This time she sits on a bed, a book of sorts open in her lap.

That ache inside him grows and he tries to breathe through it as he flips the drawing over with the others, expecting the last to be of her, too.

But it's not. And nothing can prepare him for it, either, because it's of _her._ Of her and the girl, _both_ of them, looking up to the stars as something falls out of the sky. A rocket.

A sound wells up from inside Bellamy and the gravity he's been fighting against all day suddenly seems to win. He has to grab the table to keep himself upright as he stares, unblinking, at the woman in the drawing. She looks different, too. Her hair is shorter. She is not in a hazmat suit.

No. She couldn't have drawn this weeks ahead, because she didn't know she'd stay behind then. She couldn't have drawn this after either, because she died in Praimfaya.

Unless . . . the nightblood worked, and she somehow managed to survive the deathwave.

 _Unless she survived._

That ache is a furnace now, burning him on the inside, turning him to ash. "Raven," he manages, feeling an invisible hand around his throat, choking out her name. And then louder. " _Raven!"_

But it isn't Raven who comes. It's Monty, bursting through the door a moment later. "Bellamy, you're gonna want to hear this," he says, unaware of Bellamy's struggle just to stay upright.

"Get Raven," he manages, eyes still pinned to the drawing.

"Bellamy." It's the tone Monty uses that gets his attention. "Trust me. Come _now."_ Then he's gone, leaving the door ajar after him.

Slowly, Bellamy gets his balance back. He forces himself to look away from the drawing but brings it with him as he shuffles back to the kitchen. Distantly he wonders if Raven got word to the bunker, but it's a flimsy train of thought that disintegrates. He can't think beyond the drawing and the impossible hope that tears an old wound freshly open.

He's just opened the door back to the lab when he hears it, distant and broken and riddled with static. "- _don't know why I still do this everyday . . . "_

His eyes drift upward and in that moment, it is too much to process. It both slams and seeps into him as he approaches the rail.

It's a voice he hasn't heard in over six years. A voice he never thought he'd hear again.

Below him stand the others, all eyes on the screen displaying an audiograph in blue waves.

" _Maybe it's my way of staying sane."_

The blue waves blur but Bellamy can do nothing but listen as the threads of himself threaten to unravel. He can't believe this. Can't believe what he's hearing.

" _Not forgetting who I am . . . Who I was . . . "_

He starts shaking, deep on the inside, from where the others cannot see. But he feels it, a cataclysmic shift between his ribs, under his feet, like the very world is different all of a sudden.

"That's Clarke," Monty says quietly, a quiver in his voice. "Right?"

" _It's been safe for you to come down for over a year now . . ."_

"When was this?" Bellamy asks, a part of him surprised that he's able to speak at all. But he is. Harshly. He looks at Raven whose own eyes are glassy. "How old is this feed?" Six years, a part of him hopes, even with the drawing he still clutches in his left hand telling him otherwise. He wants her alive. He's wanted it since he lost it. He just doesn't want her alive and alone.

Raven pauses the feed and it's a moment before she speaks. "April 24th." Her eyes cut him. "Forty-eight hours ago."

And those threads come undone.

Bellamy clasps the rail with both hands, feeling as if the very ground were pulled from under his feet and he's falling again, like the dropship did from the sky. Like the rocket does in the drawing.

"Clarke's alive," he says quietly, out loud, giving voice to a hope he never dared to keep lit. His gaze bores into Raven, her figure painted in blue, blurring beyond his veil of unshed tears. "And you're telling me that she _has_ been alive, this _entire time,_ here? _Alone_?"

A terribly sad look crosses Raven's face and for a moment, no one speaks. They don't even breathe. She takes a step towards him. "Bellamy-"

"We _left_ her!" he shouts, the chaos folded inside him suddenly erupting. This pain isn't the same as the kind he's carried around for six years. That pain was a scar from a wound that just never healed properly. This pain is a worse pain, because he mourned her when she was still alive. Buried her while she was still breathing. "She saved us," he says, brokenly. "And we left her here to die."

Raven shakes her head. "But she didn't. She-"

"No, instead _she_ got to live on an isolated planet for six years without even knowing _that we were alive."_ Bellamy slams a hand against the rail, a storm caged inside him. This means that she came back. Clarke came back to an empty lab, knowing they'd gone. After he'd waited, she had _come back._ Maybe a few minutes later. Maybe a few seconds. But she had. And that beautiful, terrible truth slams into Bellamy, until it feels as if something inside him is breaking. "We should've waited longer," he says, as tears finally leak out. " _I_ should've waited longer." _But instead I left her. Not only to die, but to live alone, in silence._

Raven reaches him but doesn't touch him. Right now, she knows better than to. "You know Clarke. That's not what she would've wanted."

Bellamy looks at her. "And this was?"

"If it meant our survival, then _yes."_

"But if she's alive," cuts in Monty, "where is she?"

Bellamy scrubs his face and looks back at the screen, suddenly afraid. He can break. He is breaking. But he will do so fully later, in the privacy of a room, after he finds out everything he needs to know.

"Keep the feed going," says Bellamy around the pain in his chest.

A click from Raven, and her voice resumes, filling the lab. Drowning him.

" _. . . The bunker's gone silent too. We tried to dig them out for awhile but . . . there was too much rubble. I haven't made contact either."_

Bellamy shuts his eyes. His anger recedes and in its place falls an old desperation.

" _Anyway . . . I still have hope. Tell Raven to aim for the one spot of green and you'll find me. The rest of the planet from what I've seen basically sucks, so . . . "_

A long pause. Bellamy opens his eyes again.

" _Never mind . . ."_ her voice chimes back. " _I see you."_

Static. Bellamy looks sharply at Raven. Questions bombard him, but they quiet in place of the new, loudest one that makes his chest go tight. He pulls out the drawing and unfurls it, until he is again looking into her hopeful face. She isn't speaking of them, he knows.

But if it's not them, who else can it be?


	2. Possibilities

**I'm really enjoying writing this one. It's cooperating more than the other one right now, in that I can visualize the characters a bit more clearly. Maybe this one will be a four-part story. Five? However long it takes for the reunion to occur without compromising the realistic pace of the story. Thank you for reading and please review!**

"A _prison ship?"_

Bellamy stares at Raven with wide eyes as the air suddenly seems to turn very cold. "Why?"

Raven runs a hand along a screen, still rifling through digital files. "It was the only way Becca could create nightbloods."

"But if they're frozen, how is it they managed to land here?"

"Because it would make sense for Becca to include a deactivation mechanism embedded in the chryo system. Maybe triggered after a certain amount of time." Raven turns to him and shrugs. "Why else would she create nightbloods if she didn't plan on bringing them to the ground at some point? I think she wanted to ensure their survivability."

"Or their removal from the human race," Bellamy counters. He turns around sharply, trying to clear his muddled thoughts. It's as if his nerves have been electrified, incited by a dormant dream he's kept tucked away inside himself. Laid to rest beside a dead Lincoln and a massacred grounder army.

 _It's been safe for you to come down for over a year now._

"Who are these guys?" Bellamy asks.

Raven's fingers scatter over the keyboard, face painted pale in the screen light. "I'm trying to find out, but it's not like Becca kept their names in a folder. She used them as test subjects. Illegally. That's not exactly something she'd want to keep records of."

"So we have a band of criminals that came down from space?" Murphy asks. "And no one wants to comment on that irony?"

"She has to have put them somewhere," Bellamy snaps, ignoring Murphy. The ice inside him melts as his frustration builds, heating his blood. He doesn't know enough. None of them do. He feels like he's stepped back into the past, watching a clock run out of time.

"Just give me . . . a minute," Raven grounds, brows furrowed in concentration. "There's a few files that are encrypted, but I think I can decode them."

Bellamy runs a hand through his hair. The other still holds the drawing, now crumpled, but he doesn't put it down.

It's as if Raven's read his mind, and her eyes flicker to the paper. "What's that?"

Bellamy lowers his hand. "Nothing," he says gruffly.

"Do you think they could've taken her?" asks Monty, the edge in his voice sharpening Bellamy's.

"And then what, returned to space?" Murphy suggests sullenly. "Why would they bother landing at all if they didn't plan on sticking around for awhile?"

Bellamy's gaze narrows. "Murphy's right. We should organize a search party. Murphy, Echo, and Harper with me. Raven, Monty, and Emori can stay here in case-"

"Hold on, Bellamy. Let's first learn what it is we're dealing with before we start making plans."

Bellamy sidles closer to Raven. "We might not have enough time for that." _She might not have enough time. The bunker might not._

Raven's sharp eyes turn on him. "You might be right, but either way, you're not thinking clearly here." There's a warning in her gaze, and her voice drops a decibel, her next words meant only for him. "It's been a long time since we've needed any plan of defense. Let's not start again by being stupid about it."

Anger surges inside him, but Raven whirls back to the screens before he can say anything.

He casts a glance at the others in the room. In each face he can measure some sense of anticipation, but it's Monty's and Murphy's that seem almost to match his.

As much as he doesn't want to admit it, he knows she's right. But he also knows that if he doesn't do anything soon, it won't matter. He gestures to Murphy. "Let's see if we can find any sort of gear. Knowing Clarke, there's gotta be something. Raven," he casts her a look from over his shoulder. "You've got a half hour to find a name. A clue. Anything that could help us. After that I'm going out to look, with or without your approval."

* * *

"Check everywhere. Any weapons should be in an obvious place. I doubt she would've hid them, not when she had no reason to use them," says Bellamy as they enter the kitchen again, walking straight for the cabinets. He searches them once more, thoroughly this time, scanning the shelves with a tactical eye. Nothing. He moves down the hallway, past the table where the other drawings still rest.

"So," Murphy says, having to walk faster to keep up with the taller man's stride. "Clarke's alive."

The words still jar him. They make his heart pound. He dips into the bathroom and pulls open the drawers. "Yeah."

"You okay with that?"

Bellamy jerks his head back, as if he's hit him. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

Murphy shrugs. His expression may still be nonchalant and his humor dry, but he's become more transparent over the years. From criminal to ally. From friend to family. Murphy sees more than he lets on. "Because being okay with it means being okay with letting her live in solitude for so long." He sighs. "Maybe you think dying would've been kinder."

Bellamy pauses, eyes on the needless pieces in the drawer. He doesn't really see them at all. "How long were you trapped in that underground bunker for?"

"A few months."

"And how did you handle it?"

Murphy doesn't respond immediately. "I didn't."

Bellamy finally looks at him, his friend's slick-backed hair russed, like he used to wear it so long ago. "A few months. Clarke's been here for years. Our survival . . . sentenced her to this."

Murphy nods as he crosses his arms. "Maybe, but you're forgetting one thing she had that I didn't. _Hope_. You heard her for yourself. And she still has it."

Bellamy doesn't answer. He just shakes his head and closes the drawers, a little harder than necessary. He pushes past Murphy and back to the hall.

"We all left her, Bellamy," Murphy says to his back. "All of us. You're not the only one carrying that guilt around."

Bellamy stills. His jaw locks. "I'll check the bedroom."

With that, he strides down the hall that curls to the left and stops before a door. It's cracked open, and Bellamy suddenly slows. Suddenly everything seems very, very fragile, and Bellamy edges the door farther open with tentative fingers.

The bed is . . . bare. Stripped. But the room itself is tidy. He scans the place, expecting more hints of the girl he used to know. Whose words he still keeps wrapped inside. He slips in fully, until he stands in the middle of the room, looking between the stripped bed and the nightstand. He goes to it first, every sound he makes like a deafening disturbance. He pulls open its drawer too, looking for something. Anything.

But there's nothing. Empty. How could someone who's lived here for six years not have anything of herself around? Bellamy stands back up and surveys the room again, faster. He needs some sign, some hint, some _touch_ of the girl that breathes life into the reality that she is alive. Yet he finds none. It's as if Clarke doesn't live here at all.

 _Maybe she doesn't. Not anymore._

The thought sits like a rock inside him, but he feels the truth of it. This home wasn't so much a home as it was probably a prison, and who wouldn't want to leave it as soon as possible? Make a real home outside again, under the stars?

Bellamy's jaw clenches until his teeth feel as if they are about to crack. Anger, desperation, so torrential tears through him and he wants nothing more than to pick up the small nightstand and introduce it to the wall. But reason reigns him in. Instead he falls onto the bed, arms on his knees, the drawing in hand. He pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes to make the empty room around him disappear.

 _Aim for the one spot of green and you'll find me._

He uncrumples the drawing once more. He wants to tell her many things. Or maybe just one thing. I'm sorry. _I'm sorry._ But he won't say it yet. When he says it, he will say it to her directly, because now it's real. Now it's _possible._

He straightens out the drawing and carefully folds it in quarters before slipping it into his pocket. Then he stands up and is about to leave the room again when an idea strikes him.

Bellamy drops to his knees and scopes out the underside of the bed. Nothing. He reaches a hand beneath and feels the frame. Something old and very familiar greets his palm. _There._ He grips it and pulls.

It falls out and he withdraws a rifle, not like the kind he's used to handling, but more comfortable with nonetheless. It seems she had a reason to safe keep some weapons after all.

Might as well be under the place she once slept.

* * *

"Okay, Raven. What've you got?"

"Cas Morgan," she answers as Bellamy enters the lab again.

He hurries down the stairs, Murphy on his tail. "Who's he?"

"A member of the air force imprisoned for misconduct. We're talking a prestigious fighter pilot. He disappeared shortly after his incarceration in 2018. I managed to pull some of his credentials; As it turns out, he was also apparently some sort of military operative."

Bellamy leans forward, studying the screen. "You think he might be the one running the ship?"

Raven shrugs. "I think his skillset makes him a likely candidate. How many illustrious pilots with military training do you think Becca needed?"

Bellamy doesn't bite the bait. "All right, so we've got a name. Good. Anything else?"

"Hold your gunfire. While I only managed to crack one of the encrypted files so far, I found some other stuff inside, like useful details on Eligius."

Bellamy's eyes narrow in question. "Eligius?"

Raven nods. "Name of their ship. Forgot I knew it, but I remember now." She ignores his grim expression. "It's been six years. Not even I can remember every single word I've read for an indefinite period of time."

He squeezes the back of her chair. "Wouldn't surprise me if you could."

She smirks a ghost of a smile, but it disappears the moment she pulls up a grainy picture of a ship with the words _Corporation_ embossed on the side. "So Eligius. Prison ship. We're talking old, _old_ model. That doesn't make it small though. Based off what I'm finding here," she eyes the weapon in his hands, "we're gonna need a lot more than just a few rifles."

"Why?" Bellamy asks, that coldness creeping back inside him. "How many are on that ship?"

Raven turns to him, her somber expression matching his. "Based off my estimates . . . well over a hundred. Maybe more."

Her words are like a physical weight bearing down on his shoulders. He suddenly doesn't feel as confident as he did when finding the rifles. They look like sticks now. Useless.

"There's something else, Bellamy."

He doesn't want to hear it, but he asks anyway, because he knows he has to. All the facts. However many he can get to paint a clearer picture of what it is they may be up against. "What?"

For once, Raven looks reluctant, eyebrows pulled tightly together. "I'm not sure if you heard the first part of Clarke's feed, but she said she radioed us everyday. _You._ That it was-"

"Her way of staying sane." Now that part makes sense, and it hurts just that much more.

Raven nods. "Now this isn't for certain, but you know her feed wasn't going to us. It's possible that it was going elsewhere. To Eligius. Bellamy, . . . " he doesn't like the look he sees in her eyes, and can almost piece it together before she says it. "They could know about the bunker."

It's as if she's dumped ice water over him. He stops breathing. The world pauses, halted by her words as horrible possibilities battle to the forefront of his mind. They're too ugly to put into words. Too terrifying to imagine.

"We're leaving," he barks, a soldier's order. _"Now."_


	3. Memories

**Next chapter! For some reason I can really see the next season happening along these lines, but either way I feel like it's realistic. Please review!**

The adrenaline has chased away most of the pain in Bellamy's legs.

His body still hurts, but it is a distant discomfort compared to the fear that propels him forward, boots slapping against hard Earth, air turning his lungs to ash. The sun burns his skin and dries out his corneas. He coughs on the dirt he kicks up, until they hit a grassy knoll that offers some relief from the dust. He tries to see ahead but the trees, though sparse, still manage to obscure his view.

Frustration is another driving force of his.

"I remember Polis being closer," he rasps, almost to himself. Training on the Ark has certainly prepared him for physical labor, but the geography of Earth is harsher than the flatness of the Ring. Gravity alone feels capable of pulling him to the ground.

He casts a glance at the others. Echo's the closest to him, followed by Murphy, Emori, and Raven, with Monty and Harper flanking them. Raven drags in haggard breaths. They all do. "Everything feels closer when you've got a Rover." She shakes her head and squints in the light, surveying the area before her. "I miss those machines."

As she eyes the land, Bellamy eyes her leg. Though it still donns a brace, the years have given her time to produce a solution to pain management, and he hasn't heard any complaints from her about it since. But this isn't the Ring. Pain management is another story down here. "How's your leg?"

She gives him a noncommittal shrug. Grinds her heel into the dirt for emphasis. "Dandy. We need to find a water source soon though. We aren't any help to your sister or Clarke otherwise."

Bellamy nods his agreement and shifts his attention to Echo, who bends down and brushes her fingers across a broken twig. "Find something?" Everything in him reignites, a fuse approaching detonation.

Echo pinches it between her slender fingers and Bellamy holds his breath, anticipation and fear curling around him. But she drops it a moment later and stands. "An animal. No boot impressions." She disturbs the dirt with the toe of her boot. "Our sky criminals didn't come this way."

"Think they might be friendly?" Harper chirps. "We were called criminals too. Maybe they're just-"

"Misunderstood?" supplies Bellamy, a note of disdain in his voice. He casts Harper a sympathetic look. "Maybe. I hope that's the case. But we have to be prepared if it's not."

She nods her agreement as Echo resumes walking. "Come on. I think I remember there being a stream up here."

"Really?" asks Bellamy, surprised. "How can you tell?"

The gleam in her eyes is that of a hunter. "The animals might die and the trees might burn, but the context of the land seems to have stayed the same. Fire can't consume the hills anymore than it can stomp out the mountains."

He follows after her, close behind. He doesn't want her to get too far ahead anymore than he wants the others to. They are a family, and he plans to keep it that way. "That's good enough for me."

* * *

"Up here," says Echo a handful of miles later, and somehow the returned Grounder manages to quicken her step, as if she is sidestepping gravity's grip.

"Echo, wait," Bellamy tells her, but she doesn't. Whereas Raven doesn't give much heed when it comes to any order of his, Echo usually listens, not out of subservience, but gratitude. For letting her live. For bringing her with them. That's how their relationship started as, at least, but it's shifted along the way, gratitude giving way to loyalty. Loyalty augmenting into friendship.

So when she hurries ahead, Bellamy has no choice but to do the same, with energy he doesn't have. Him and the others follow her up a grassy plateau to where the trees part, and suddenly things don't look so much like a pathway as they do a . . . road.

Bellamy comes to a stop, breathing hard. His focus drifts from Echo to the circular structure up ahead. Caution and curiosity tugs him forward, the shape taking form the farther they walk, until Bellamy's looking at a hut of some sorts. It's held together by walls of wood bound in twine and topped with a thatched pine roof. A little farther lies another one, nestled on grassy plains sprouting buds of vibrant lavender.

The instant Bellamy sees them, he knows who put them there, the artist who built them with her own hands.

"It's . . ." he begins, but the words slip away.

"Beautiful," supplies Raven. "Guess we know where Clarke's been spending her time."

But Bellamy barely hears her as he starts for the one closest to him, hands tightening over his rifle. He motions to the others. "Spread out!" He won't let himself be surprised by anything, and suspense pulls the air taut as Bellamy reaches the door, grabs the wooden frame, and thrusts it open.

A big part him really expects her to be there. So much so the hope unknowingly overtakes him. Yet he has only to glance around the small, circular hut once to know it's empty, and his disappointment is like a stone falling through his ribs. A stillness seems to flood the room.

Footsteps sound behind him, and he doesn't need to look to know it's Raven. "I'm sorry," she says quietly, her words for him alone.

He clears his throat and steps inside, folding up his sorrow and analyzing the room. A small cot made of dry, grass stalks and covered with some type of fur occupies most of the room.

Bellamy takes another step and nearly hits his forehead against something that dangles from the thatched roof. He glances up.

Many somethings swing from it, in fact, little trinkets that look like stars and planets made of warped pieces of metal. He turns in a slow circle, eyes drifting to one to the next in wonder, captivated. "What . . ." He drifts off when he sees it. Almost at the center of the makeshift galaxy rests a hoop that looks to be of steel, tethered to a strand of twine.

The Ring, hung inside her universe.

He stares at it, unblinking. That storm inside him seems to grow, crashing over him. Drowning him.

" _You have such a big heart, Bellamy. But if we're going to survive this, you have to use this too."_

" _I have you for that."_

It takes him a long moment to look away, and even then it is only because of the sudden tentativeness in Raven's voice. "Bellamy?" she asks softly.

"Nothing's here." He turns back to the door sharply, sidling past Raven without a single glance. "I'll check the other one."

The next hut, he finds, is a storage space of sorts, with a sack of roots piled in one corner and seeds in another, tied off in torn scraps of cloth. Against the back wall rest a few sticks sharpened to deadly points. Spears.

Instinct tells him to take them, so he does. The roots as well, but not all of them. Just in case.

"Echo," Bellamy calls when he turns back to the group. Her hand is already out when he tosses her one and Emori the next. Murphy eyes the spear dismally, and nods in the direction of the second hut. "What's in the bag?"

Bellamy digs the end of the spear into the dirt. He drops the sack too. The rest he piled by the seeds. "Lunch." He tosses Murphy one of the strange, misshapen pieces.

He barely manages to grab it in time. "Great," he says as he studies it. "Radiation roots."

Bellamy doles them out to the rest until he's left with just his own. He grimaces, hands tightening around it. "Could be worse," he says, snapping off a piece because he knows he'll need the fuel. "Least it's not algae."

* * *

Thanks to some containers Raven found in one of the huts, they're able to bring with them enough river water to reach Polis. Or what Bellamy hopes is enough. If he finds they have to backtrack or carve a different route, he doubts their supply will last. He can't worry about that, though. Not yet.

When the sun begins to wane, stretching out the trees shadows like fingers, Raven sets down her pack, forcing Bellamy and the others to pause. "We'll rest here for the night," she says resolutely.

But Bellamy turns from her to the young forest, as if he can see through its growing darkness and all the way to the bunker. "Not yet. We still have some daylight."

"Bellamy." Raven grounds out his name. "This is still our first day here. We need to rest if we're going to be of any use to anyone tomorrow."

He glances back at her. Everything in him wants to argue. Though tired, _exhausted_ even, nothing inside knows how to stop. He _has_ stopped, for six years on the ring, when life was an endless routine on replay. But now they're clock has restarted His sister is close. Things he's waited and longed after for years are _close,_ and now something threatens to take that all away from him. Again. And he won't let it. He can't.

But the survivor inside him says that Raven is right. So despite everything, he forces himself to remove his pack and set it on the ground. "Let's be gone before daybreak. 'Til then, we'll trade off guard shifts. I'll take the first, then Murphy, then Echo." Bellamy surveys the area and truds over to the rocky ridge they've stopped on. There, by the edge, is where he sits, glad, if anything, for the decent visual it provides him.

* * *

" _Bellamy . . ."_

 _His name comes to him on a breath. He knows the voice, no matter how many years have passed. He_ knows _it._

 _He doesn't realize he's in Becca's lab until he turns at the sound, only to face the kitchen table "Clark. On the surface rests the drawing of her and the young girl._

" _Bellamy . . ."_

 _He twists back around. "Clarke?" He walks down the hall, dipping his head into the bedroom. Empty._

" _Bellamy . . ."_

 _Desperation mounts inside him all of a sudden, in a burst that has him walking faster. "Clarke? Are you here?"_

 _Silence._

 _He opens his mouth to call for her again when an odd vibration seems to tear through the floor. His eyes snap to the door leading to the lab and before he can even think to move he is running, propelled by a greater sense of hurry than he can understand._

 _He shoves the door open and races down the stairs, searching wildly for the source of the voice. But it's empty, too. "Where are you, Clarke?"_

" _Bellamy . . ." It's clearer this time. Close. He goes for the door that will lead outside. "Clarke!"_

" _Bellamy . . ."_

 _He grabs the handle and pulls._

"Bellamy?"

His eyes snap open.

Above him hovers a dark figure cast in shadow and a jolt runs through him. His mind flashes to criminals in frozen chambers. But then recognition hits. "Echo?"

She jerks her chin towards the ridge at his back. "I saw something."

Alertness sweeps through him and his blood hums, already alive from the dream. He shifts around so quickly the stars above him spin. "What is it?"

She maneuvers around him and stretches out a hand, pointing to the east. "Voices. They were brief, but they sounded like they were coming from there."

Bellamy follows past the tip of her finger, scouring the darkness. "Did it sound like someone familiar?" _Did it sound like Clarke?_

But Echo shakes her head. "No. I think there were a few, both masculine and feminine. Like I said, it was brief."

"Sure it couldn't have just been the wind?" he asks.

He doesn't need to be able to see clearly; he senses Echo's sardonic look even in the darkness.

He dismisses his own question and squints his eyes in an attempt to see better. It doesn't work. "East. That's closer to Polis." He watches the stillness with a hunter's focus before motioning to Echo. "Wake the others."

It isn't until late afternoon they reach it, the sun midway to tumbling into the sea. Or what used to be a sea. The tiredness in Bellamy has faded since Echo woke him, aware of every sound and snap the group makes. And it doesn't lessen any but builds, until they are standing at the edge of the capital and he expects to find a ship full of armed criminals waiting for them.

But it's desolate. Barren.

Bellamy is only able to recognize it by the ruins; broken pieces of stone litter the area, chunks lodged in the ground like teeth, partially buried like headstones. The trees have been razed to flinders. The paths once paved by people have been washed away in fire. Warped pieces of metal jut from the ground.

Bellamy gazes at it, lips parted in shock. He remembers watching this city burn, and the memory returns with crystal focus, sharp as knives. "It's clear," he says.

An unearthly quiet blankets the city as Bellamy and the others approach, boots crunching gravel and ash underfoot. It is a graveyard, with monuments of rubble and a memorial of ruin. It feels invasive, as if they are disturbing what ought to stay at rest.

But they don't stop. Bellamy does not stop. On the contrary, the further he walks, the faster he goes, until his walk has morphed into a jog. He holds the rifle tightly against his chest, scanning the bends around rocks too high to see over.

And there, at the center of the destruction, lies the capital of Polis, folded over like dominoes.

It blends in with the rest of the debris so horrifically that Bellamy almost doesn't recognize it. But he knows, the old memories unfurling with a new vibrancy, as if the dust has been wiped from them.

His hands loosen on the gun and his shoulders sink as he takes it in. The mound of rubble. The heaps of rock piled over where the bunker should to be. Where he thinks it _might_ be, but he could be wrong. But he can't be wrong, not about this.

"No," the word leaves him in a quiet breath.

He sets down the rifle and hurries to the ruins, running his hands over the jagged pieces of debris, searching. They're still warm from the sun. 'Where is it?" he asks, pulling himself onto a shelf of rock. "Where is it?" He grabs hold of one stone half his size and tries to move it, fingers scrabbling over the surface. It doesn't budge. "Murphy, Monty, over there." He motions for them to try elsewhere as he turns around and uses his back instead, hoping to force his own rock the other way as he uses the other pieces as leverage.

He shoves his weight against it, straining his muscles. He holds his breath and drives his back into the rock, as hard as he can, until it feels as if he's about to crack his bones over it. "C'mon," he hisses as sweat starts to pool at his hairline, dripping down his temples. "C' _mon_!"

"Bellamy . . ."

He barely hears Raven and even then he doesn't stop. He can't. He didn't spend six years in space to come home to _this._ He didn't wait six years surviving, imagining, hoping _for this._

"Bellamy."

"No!" he shouts, because the longing inside him can't be buried anymore. There's nothing _left_ of himself to bury it in, because it's all here. He is _so close._ It is the Ark all over again, with his sister just beneath his feet.

"You can't move it, Bellamy."

He doesn't listen, pausing long enough to pull in another breath.

"Bellamy!"

A hand latches onto his arm and instinct, desperation, has him shoving it away. It only grabs him again. "Bellamy, _stop."_ He distantly notes that it's Murphy.

But Bellamy pushes him away, heart pounding against his chest, breath sawing through gritted teeth. "I _can't,_ " he rasps. "Not now. They're here. They're _right here,_ Murphy. I'm not leaving Octavia down there!"

Murphy looks him hard in the eyes, sweat glistening on his brows. "Right now we don't have much of a choice." He gestures to Raven. "Reyes says there has to be at least a few tons of rock here, all right? We _can't_ move it."

Bellamy stares at him, mouth coated in dust, eyes stinging with sweat. "There has to be a way." He drags his gaze over the others, desperate. "A bomb. An explosion. _Something."_ His eyes lock with Raven's. "There's gotta be enough supplies for you, right?"

Her reluctance tells him everything he needs to know.

He stands a moment, exchanging a glance with each of them, incredulous. "You aren't really suggesting there's _nothing,_ right? After everything we've done? Everything we've _been_ through?" he shakes his head and looks pointedly back at Raven, because he knows she can read the words in his eyes. Can feel the fire in his bones. "Think, Raven. There's always been another way."

She studies him, first through somber eyes. She runs a hand across the crown of her head, and Bellamy can actually pinpoint the moment she starts running possibilities in her mind. Her gaze narrows and suddenly she's not looking at him but _through_ him, thinking, weighing, strategizing. She builds plans in her head like hands do cities.

Bellamy waits, chest tight, lungs burning. He won't accept that there's nothing. And he knows she won't either.

Finally, after what feels like hours, her eyes drift back to him. "I could rig an explosion strong enough to crack the larger stones and loosen the smaller ones. But that's _if_ I had the supplies."

"Which you say Becca's lab doesn't have," Murphy says as he slings his rifle back across his shoulder.

"Right." She looks from him back to Bellamy. "But I think I know a place that does."

An uncomfortable silence falls over them and Bellamy appraises her. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" He does, because the soldier inside is already prepared for her answer.

The others sense it too, because it's Murphy who delivers it. "That the supplies just so happens to include our newest convoy of criminals?" he nods grimly. "Sounds about right."

Bellamy's hands tighten into fists as a coolness steals into him, his focus sharpening to a deadly point. A piece locked deep in him seems to loosen. The last of his old instincts rise from the ashes, shifting back into position.

It might be his imagination, but he thinks he feels them click.


	4. Playing with Fire

**So, since this next chapter ended up being long, I've split it into two parts. The next part will probably be up today as well. Note: If I wanted to commit to writing this as an actual _book,_ detail-wise, other stuff would be going on. So just know that, though I'm not writing it, other stuff is happening in the bunker and between Clarke and Madi. I might include Clarke's POV in a bit, but I kind of like how the reader doesn't know what's going on with her. Anyway, please review! **

"So, our ironclad plan is to break into a prison ship to steal _compost?_ " Murphy deadpans that evening, as Bellamy and the rest of the group set up camp inside the ruins of Polis. It is like sleeping beside graves, as somewhere beneath the dirt hums a thousand heartbeats.

That is the hope, at least.

He sits on one of the stones, rifle held in his right hand like a spear. He listens to the conversation with electrified senses, instinct in him already hunting, searching.

"A compost that reacts explosively when put in contact with a much more abundant resource," Raven says, etching something in the dirt with a piece of bent metal. "Fire."

Murphy grimaces, gaze flat with doubt. "Not exactly fool proof."

Raven's dark eyes snap to him. "You got a better plan?"

"No. One question though; how can we even be certain they have it?"

In contrast, Monty almost sounds hopeful. "Because they would've needed some method of agriculture production and that would've been the most common alternative with the limited resources they had. It would make sense that they have it stored somewhere."

"All right," Murphy concedes, leaning back against a piece of wall still lodged into the ground, arm resting on a knee. "So now that we know what we're after and that it's in high demand, got any ideas for how to find the prison ship carrying it?"

At that, Bellamy shares a glance at Echo, where she sits sharpening a scrap of metal to a wicked point. Tracking skills are survival skills, and the survivor inside doesn't fade so gently, not even with time. If anyone could find the ship, it would be her.

Harper interrupts his idea before he can voice it. "Why do we have to find it?" she asks, expression thoughtful. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, where the rest of it is gathered in a loose bun. "I mean, why not just have them come to us?"

Bellamy's nerves somehow heighten even more, until he can feel the anticipation thrumming just beneath his skin as he follows her train of thought. "You mean draw their attention here." The notion is quickly proceeded by a frown as doubt shoves inside. "Right now, they don't know we're here. I'm not so sure it's a good idea giving up the one advantage we actually have."

"An advantage we can't be certain is still ours. They could've seen us land, or found the ship by now."

"And if they haven't?"

Harper clasps her hands together, methodical. "There are other ways to get their attention without implementing ourselves."

"Or we could just track them." Bellamy gestures to Echo with a tilt of his chin. "Echo thinks she may have heard them just the other night. They were close. Why not just go from there?"

He expects Echo to back him up, but she just shrugs. "Cliff faces are deceptive," she says, pausing in her handiwork. "Yes, the voices were coming from the east, but exact locations are difficult to pinpoint. If I'd seen any firelight, I could take us right to them, but I didn't. Besides, finding a few voices doesn't guarantee finding the ship. If it were a hunting party, they would have gone by now."

She resumes brushing the makeshift blade across a fragment of rock. "I would agree with Harper. It would be convenient for us to lure them out on _our_ terms. Not only would it lead us to the ship, but it would provide us with less people to be seen by on the inside, if the fire's big enough." She holds up the knife to inspect her work and the fading rays of light reflect off its metal. They catch in the blade and make it grin.

It's Bellamy's turn to grimace, frustrated. It's sound reason, yet the idea of them drawing an entire convoy of criminals to them seems to pull off what little armor they have. He reminds himself that they have defeated bigger threats in the past, but the memory of a lever instills in him no confidence. If anything, it only succeeds in sapping a bit of his energy. A bit of his verve. There's no reassurance in the reminder of those he's killed before.

With a sigh of acquiescence, he looks back at Harper. "What's your plan?"

"I suggest we stake a place out and light it up," Harper says as her eyes slide over to Raven, "using some of our _abundant resource_."

* * *

The firelight appears to him as a massive red flag. A big, ugly cry into the now-black night that they are there, though Raven and Monty manage to make it look like a natural incident. A small, wildfire, contains in the eyes of those who have produced it.

The hope is that it won't appear that way to _them_.

"If they see their only food resource burning," Raven says as she stands back enough to watch the flames, the light bathing her in an eerie red glow, "you better believe they'll come running."

Bellamy presses his lip into a thin line as he watches the fire dance below the rock outcropping they crouch behind. The others are stationed close-by, ready to pick up whatever trail the newcomers blaze.

He doesn't bother to remind Raven that it is _their_ solitary food source as well; she knows it.

The rest of the plan is cursory at best; they wait until they hear the others come from which direction. If nearby, locating them will be easy. If not, Bellamy and the rest of the group will follow them back to the ship after they've put out the flames.

After that, the plan becomes less of a plan and more like a few hopeful chances tethered together.

Right now, it's the best they've got.

He feels Raven's gaze on him. "I know we haven't had much of a chance to get into this, and I know I don't need to ask how you're handling everything."

He doesn't look at her, keeping his eyes locked on the fire. "I'm fine. We knew . . . we knew when coming back that things would be different."

 _Worlds different._

"Yeah, we knew the earth would be fried, not that presumed dead friends would be . . . okay."

He clenches his jaw, teeth grinding. "You really wanna talk about this now?"

He can see her expression from the corner of his eye, and he knows she doesn't buy it. "You mean before we go busting into a highly militarized prison ship? I'm thinking now's as good a time as any."

At that, Bellamy finally looks at her. Firelight glows in her eyes. Part of him wishes she never asked. Another part is relieved that she did. "I don't . . . I don't know. All this time, she was alive. And I'm glad. I'm . . . grateful. But I'm also not because it reminds me of what we had to do. What _I_ had to do. And now that I know she's out there . . ." he shakes his head and returns his eyes to the fire before regaining his nerve. He looks at Raven again, as anger towards himself burns like the flames. "What do I say to someone whose pain that's lasted for six years means more to me right now than their sacrifice ever did?"

Raven's brows knit together in understanding. "Bellamy, you can't-"

The echo of voices interrupts her.

Bellamy's attention snaps back to the forest and the sounds that loom in its darkness, faint at first but growing louder and louder.

All of Bellamy's thoughts dissipate like a cloud. His focus is on the approaching strangers, shouting at one another as they run through the trees.

Keeping to the rocks, Bellamy ushers Raven forward. "Let's move."

She doesn't need to be told. Raven is already in action, maneuvering down the stones with practiced precision. He is not the only one who has kept up training on the Ring.

Bellamy looks between the forested terrain beyond, following the trail he's mapped out in his head, and the throng of stomping feet and troubled voices. He's just reached the end of the outcropping where the debris gives way to forest when figures appear.

Even by the fire, it's difficult to discern much; a coterie of people clothed in dark material, ranging in height, gender, and what appears to be age. A glimpse of blonde eclipsed between two figures grabs his focus with both hands. A jolt runs up the length of Bellamy's spine and for a moment his heart stops.

It's as if the woman senses it. She turns her head just enough for him to catch her profile, and though stands at least fifty feet from him, he knows.

It's not her.

"Bellamy."

He pulls his attention away from the girl and turns to Raven. He follows her gaze to the trees, where a fragment of light shines, as if a piece of star has been knocked from the sky. Echo.

Two succinct flashes.

"They're coming from the South," Bellamy murmurs so low he can barely hear himself. He cranes his head around the block they rest against. Straight ahead lies the forest. To his right the fire burns. Shadows cling to him and he presses himself into the rock, until its cold surface bleeds through his jacket.

Not wanting to risk the noise, he holds up a hand for Raven. He shares a glance with her, but he can't see much beyond the spark in her eyes as he counts down with his fingers.

 _One . . ._

 _Two . . ._

Three.

Raven makes a run for it first with Bellamy right on her heels. Though there's little chance to be seen, Bellamy's heart hammers in his chest, pounding like a cudgel against his sternum. He's grateful there's no moon tonight.

When he borders the treeline with Raven already well past, he checks over his shoulder again,half-expecting them to have been spotted. Waiting for the cries of alarm to sound for an entirely different reason.

But no.

The throng of criminals is engaged with the fire, using what they can to douse and stomp it out.

Thanks to the closer proximity, Bellamy's able to make out more prominent features and his gaze skips from one figure to the next, as if he can glean their secrets by their faces alone.

But they are like ants, similar in wear and conduct, and he can't look at one for very long before they are lost to him in the bedlam. The only difference he's able to discern is some sort of badge each individual wears, adorning the right shoulder, probably denoting rank or station.

Bellamy tries to separate the leader from the group. Cas Morgan, Raven said.

But the chaos swallows his chances. Smoke clogs the air and Bellamy has to stifle a cough as it paints the otherwise rich onyx sky a milky pitch.

Almost reluctantly Bellamy turns his back on the group and enters farther into the trees, sidling past Raven once more. His eyes tell her it's okay. They're clear.

For the first time in years, Bellamy is a soldier again. Space offered reprieve from bloodshed, and yet landing on the ground seems to have landed them right back into war.

 _But maybe it will be different,_ a part of him thinks. _Maybe this won't end in blood._

It's a fleeting hope he's had before.

* * *

The ship looks like a monster in the dark.

Its shadow is a monolith, hunkering down in a small meadow. Or perhaps it decimated what trees were there in its landing. Either way, the sight cools the coals in Bellamy's blood. Now that he's able to see what it is they are up against, his doubts double, until he feels like he's looking less at a ship and more at a floating chamber, the kind that will take him from his sister forever.

He swallows. "So that's it." The words fall short.

"Yeah," says Raven by his side, analyzing the ship herself. "That's it."

A buzz of noise surrounds the area; people in dark clothes run from a ramp protruding from the underside of the ship and Bellamy watches with a dry mouth. It will be hard, but not impossible. He can't afford impossible. Octavia can't.

"All right." Bellamy turns until his back is on the ship, as if not seeing it will strengthen the integrity of their plan. "Raven and Monty, you're with me. Echo, Emori, Harper and Murphy will keep watch. We'll signal when we're out, and you tell us when it's safe to run, got it?" Bellamy looks each of them in the eyes, hoping he looks as confident as he wishes he were.

"If any of you are seen-" he starts.

"It would be bad," Murphy finishes for him.

"And they'd know we're be outnumbered."

"Sure you don't want me with you?" asks Murphy, sharing a glance between him and Raven before they settle on him. "You never know if you'll need an extra set of hands."

Bellamy gives a small shake of his head. "Better if you stay with the others. Keep watch. Maybe distract our visitors if it calls for it. _Discreetly,"_ he adds.

Murphy grimaces and a seriousness steals into his features. "Just get in and get out. Don't go trying to play hero, okay?"

That's almost enough to make Bellamy smirk without humor. Hero? It's been a long time since he's played such a part.

"We should be back within the hour," he says instead. "But if for some reason we're not . . ." the words linger there, taut and heavy.

Murphy nods. "I know."

In that moment, Bellamy wants to say more, but words slip through his hands. Six years, and they've never parted. Never been without one another. There was no threats of death they didn't face together. No just in cases. It has been the seven of them, to the stars and back.

Murphy extends a hand and Bellamy grabs it, pulling him into a momentary hug. "Take care of them," says Bellamy.

"You know I will."

Bellamy wants to say more, but he won't. No goodbyes will be said today, not if he can help it.

He steps away and turns back to the ship, crouching in wait like the dark things he used to tell a little girl beneath the floor about. The monsters were always beaten, though. They never once won.

"C'mon," he says. "That fire won't last forever."

He can only hope he had the stories right.


	5. Places of Ice

**Yay, part 2! Well, if I'm being technical this is really part 5. I'm trying to shove in emotional moments between Bellamy and the others but they've only been on the ground for about a day, so it's hard to vacuum pack those feels. They are in the making, though. I honestly think his focus would be a bit more withdrawn, considering the circumstances. I'll have more of those moments though, just after the other fic I feel less inclined to fill up those six years in flashbacks. Please review!  
**

Cold steel grazes the nape of Bellamy's neck, causing the hairs there to rise. He stands just beside the ramp, pressed in a crouch between the ground and the hulking metal ship above.

His chest pounds like an army is marching in his head and sweat pools in the palm that grips his rifle. His hands are steady, though. The tremors are tucked away on the inside as a calm focus envelops him, attention trained on the ramp with hawk-like focus.

Behind him is Raven and Monty, their breaths hushed, the heat of their proximity suddenly cloying.

Boots clang against the ramp and Bellamy waits. He doesn't have to tell the others their cue; they are survivors, same as him, who know without words the moment he waves them forward to stick to him like glue as he darts beneath the ramp between the claps of stomping feet. His left knee rests on hard dirt. Monty and Raven are there a breath later.

There Bellamy pauses, eyes raised to the roof of the ramp. His whole body stills, waiting for a sound of alarm. For the break in the next thunderous beat to succeed voices that tell him they've been seen.

No such sound comes.

Bellamy meets Raven's eyes first, then Monty's, both their gazes affixed to him. Bellamy holds up a hand in wait as he moves from beneath the ramp just enough to see the surface of it. When more people come running, he ducks back beneath, heart jumping in his throat.

Only when the sounds dissolve again does he peek over. Light pools onto the ramp, emanating from circadian lights that line the sides of the ramp. Metal winks at him. It's still dim enough for him to motion to Raven and have her climb aboard without drawing attention. She hastens ahead of Bellamy, with him behind her and Monty behind Bellamy.

They dash inside, each sound they make grating against Bellamy's nerves like nails.

At the top, Raven folds herself into a corner and both Bellamy and Monty follow suit on the opposite side.

There, spine pinned to the wall behind him, Bellamy's heart seems to ricochet around his ribcage. Sweat drips from his temples as he stands rigid, unable to marvel at their feat of having made it onto the ship.

They wait a full minute. Bellamy stares straight ahead, unblinking, at the bare, windowless steel wall on the other side.

When it quiets enough for him to think no one is coming, Bellamy leans forward just enough to glimpse Raven, who peers back. A strand of brown hair has come loose from her ponytail.

She nods.

"Let's go," he says to Monty, his voice gruff to his own ears. Raven peels off the wall and Bellamy doesn't let her get very far before he catches up with Monty, having her take the lead.

The instant they leave behind the circadian-lit ramp and fall into a dark, sleet-grey corridor, Bellamy's glad for her navigation skills; he has only to walk down a little ways before he's already lost.

Every bend sends a lance of heat through him as the guard in him expects there to be someone waiting. Expecting. Stumbling across the trespassers at the wrong time.

They round another corner and Bellamy feels the floor slope gradually upwards. "How much farther, Raven?" he asks in a low whisper.

The mechanic comes to at the next bend, eyes snapping between the two corridors that stretch before them.

She takes a step towards the left corridor before retreating back and heading down the right one instead. "This way. I think."

"You think." Is Monty's somber reply as he casts a worrying glance between both Raven and Bellamy, but her back is to them and she doesn't see it.

"Yup."

They pass by a line of steel-bolted doors and Bellamy catches his reflection blur in the corner of his eye.

Raven holds up a hand and he comes to a dead stop, heart galloping. She waves them back and that's all it takes before Bellamy is pressing himself back against the wall as boots sound. He shuts his eyes and grits his teeth, trying to breathe silently through his nose. Trying not to breathe at all.

 _Keep going,_ he thinks, as if his will power alone can influence those coming towards him. _Keep going, keep going._

He opens his eyes to shadows stretching taut across the floor in front of him.

When the hurried steps continue past them and turn down another corridor, he isn't allowed the time to be relieved because Raven is already moving again. She might still have a subtle limp to her leg, but she's never given it permission to slow her down, and she's not about to start now.

At a door, she pauses so abruptly that Monty nearly stumbles into her. "Here."

As Raven pulls something out of the tool belt looped around her waist, Bellamy scrutinizes the door. There's no indication that behind it lies what they're looking for. No sign. Not even much of a window. There's just an ambiguous _B-5_ insignia, painted in a bold black on the left side of the wall.

Bellamy looks back at Raven who's at the door's lock pad, pulling the metal apart like a surgeon does flesh. He glances from one side of the corridor to the other. "Monty, keep watch on your left."

They stay like that as Raven works, Monty guarding one side, Bellamy the other. He stands as stoic as stone. He waits for the feet, for the endless what if's that bombard him from either side of the corridor, pelting him like bullets.

 _If someone comes._

 _If they're heard._

 _If they're seen._

Bellamy might not make it back, and Octavia will stay buried in the bunker until it becomes a tomb.

A minute falls away. Bellamy grinds his teeth. "Raven," he says, desperate to chase that picture of Octavia away, "You have to-"

The sharp shift of gears cuts him off and his gaze snaps to the door as it slides open, metal grating against metal.

Raven pops the top of the lock pad back into place before she steps inside. "You were saying?"

Bellamy doesn't respond. He and Monty follow after her, down a corridor that's distinctly smaller that it's reminiscent of a hallway. The degrees have dropped and a coolness sweeps into Bellamy. A few doors branch to the left and right but Raven only glances at them before she keeps walking. She pauses at the second to last and sighs as she works another lock pad. "You know, for a prison ship, the security here is really lacking."

"Probably because its occupants were already frozen." Says Monty. "I'm sure the last thing Becca wanted was for them to get trapped on their own ship. High security is kind of unnecessary when inmates are encased in solid ice."

"Sound reason," says Raven. She peers into the lock pad. "Then again, maybe security's not _too_ bad. Each lock is designed differently."

Alarm rockets through Bellamy. "Can you still get us in?"

Raven flashes him a look, one brow raised ever so slightly. As if to demonstrate, she tells Monty to clip one part of the interior and a moment later, the door is pulling open.

Once again, short-lived relief washes over Bellamy, even as a gust of cold blasts him. The room before him fogs. He can see his own breath. "Dumb question," he mutters to himself as he walks inside.

It's a freezer. Against the three walls that surround him are a transparent display cases, blooms of ice crystals riming the plexiglass. He can glimpse block-like objects behind the panes, and he rubs off a circle of fog to see better. He momentarily imagines a face hiding behind there.

Unbidden, he tries to picture it, being entombed in ice. Is it like sleeping? Or is it like drowning? He wonders if the prisoners could dream in there. He wonders if they would want to.

Behind the fog there is no face. Instead Bellamy reveals a shelf of plain white boxes no bigger than his pack, embossed in a variety of symbols. A sheaf of grain or corn. A flower. A drop of water. He walks to another display and swipes at the fog.

"What's it look like?" Bellamy calls as he scans the shelves. The sweat of his hand clings to the stock of his rifle. His fingers tingle from the cold.

"Like a box with a symbol that looks like a plant."

Bellamy looks from one symbol that's of a single leaf to another that's of three. "I'm gonna need you to be more specific."

Monty steps up beside him and dusts another part of the glass. "It looks like seeds," he says, browsing the shelves. "Well, maybe. Or more like . . . like _that."_ Monty shoves himself in front of Bellamy and tries to pull at the glass. When that doesn't work he presses his fingertips against the edges, and the piece covering one shelf pops open from the bottom. When he can fit his hands inside, Monty snatches up a box with a circular emblem of a sprouting seed imprinted on the front. "All right, we're good, let's go!"

Bellamy doesn't need to be told twice. Leaving the room behind, they make their way back down the hallway-like corridor, Raven once again leading the way.

When they re-enter the main stretch, the door closes automatically behind them. The iced room is gone, but a chill seems to linger, heavy, in the air.

Raven leads them straight and again do the corners sharpen Bellamy's nerves. He feels like Echo's blade; keen enough to draw blood.

Raven stops and turns around slowly. Once more do they stand before two corridors. A crease appears between Raven's dark brows.

Bellamy eyes her warily. "Raven?"

She doesn't look at him. "Hold on, I'm trying to navigate a ship that's technology predates the Ark. Give me a second."

"We don't have a second."

The very familiar pound of boots on metal grating sounds.

"Someone's-"

"This way," Raven darts quickly to the left, taking the corridor they passed earlier. It might be his imagination, but the floor seems to tilt downwards.

"Can we still get out this way?" Monty asks with as much volume as he dares.

She doesn't slow down, but glances at them from across her shoulder. There is worry in her eyes, but Raven is like fire; she always did rage under pressure. "We're about to find out."

Another corridor. More doors. Bellamy's grip on his rifle tightens, chasing away whatever color is left in his knuckles.

 _I'm coming, O._ It's like a battle cry on the inside of him. _I'm -_

Something in his periphery hooks his attention and before he even registers that he needs to stop, he's already come to a shuddering halt, the motion sending a shock up his spine.

Because beyond a door to his right and through an ocular window sits someone. Someone small. She huddle's there, her back to him, so tight she almost disappears entirely into herself.

But he knows her, if only by the hat. It's the girl in the drawings, life breathed into pencil led, as if she's just dusted off her boots and stepped from the pages.

"Stop," he calls to the others.

A pause. Raven gulps in a breath. "Bellamy, we-"

"I said _stop_." Without waiting he brings a knuckle to the window and, as softly as he can, taps on the glass.

Fast as lightning, her eyes crash against his.

And just like that, he's cut a hole into the past. Long, dark hair. Full cheeks. Big eyes, the kind that tells him they've seen more than they should. He knew a girl like her once, and anger heats his blood until his heart pounds with the force of it.

He's tired of people locking little girls in cages.

"Bellamy," Raven's voice is terse by his ears, "we don't have time. She's probably-"

"No," Bellamy snaps, glancing at her briefly before returning them back to the girl. "She's not with them."

Fear clouds the girl's eyes, but Bellamy knows defiance when he sees it. He knows _fire_ , and the narrowing of her gaze says she has it. Burns with it. Good.

But then a look of confusion crosses her features and she stands. She steps closer, cautious. Those eyes search his face and Bellamy doesn't know what else to do in that moment.

She reaches the other side of the window, that questioning look in her gaze boring into his, hat resting low on her forehead.

Bellamy slings his gun over his shoulder and shoves a hand into his pocket. He hastily pulls out the folded piece of paper and slaps it against the window for her to see.

Those brown eyes go very wide and they look between the drawing and his face, like a single line exists there.

Her lips move slow, but he can read them.

And what happens next stuns him into silence.

 _Bellamy_? she mouths, incredulous. _Bellamy Blake?_

He stares, bewildered and amazed. How does she know his name? But then it strikes him. How could she not? With all those radio calls. All those years. Even Clarke couldn't make up that many stories without diving into the real ones. The drawing tells him all he needs to know; this girl was told a story of people falling from the sky. That, somewhere, they were there now, and to look for them because maybe, just maybe, they would fall again.

Bellamy nods and a wide grin breaks across his lips. He glances at Raven long enough to tell her, "we have to open this door."

"Bell, w-"

"Open the door!" He says as loud as he dares, pleading while leaving no room for argument. "She knows Clarke. She'll help us." Somehow he knows the last part is true. He steps back enough for Raven to work. "Open it."

She looks between him and the girl, as if debating. But she must see the resolution in his eyes, the iron hold of his fists, because she hisses something unintelligible before pulling out a thin rod. She gets to work on the archaic lock pad, popping off the cover and rifling through the wires packed inside.

Boots sound from down the corridor, followed by voices.

"Hurry up, Raven," Bellamy says. He won't leave this girl here. He won't.

She holds the rod like a bit in her mouth as she works through the other wires. "Monty," she mumbles and on cue, Monty loops a finger around one of them. With a swift jerk of his wrist, he yanks it out.

A deafening blare erupts, screaming down the corridor and clawing into Bellamy's ears. His heart jumps into his throat and he thinks he hears Raven curse. "What happened?" he asks, barely able to hear himself over the noise grating against his eardrums.

Raven shakes her head, fingers digging through the wires with a newfound frenzy. "Color coding on this lock is different! I severed the wrong one!"

Other voices rise over theirs, a stream of them, hurrying his way. "Raven, we have to go. You have to get it open _now!"_

"Almost there . . ."

" _Raven . ._ ."

" _Almost . . ._ got it." There's a click, and suddenly the door retracts, revealing the young girl, eyes staring up at him. The crown of her head barely reaches his chest.

For a heartbeat, Bellamy does nothing, struck by this small presence that suddenly feels so very big. But then instinct calls him back, and he motions to her. "C'mon, we're getting you out of here."

"Bellamy Blake?" she says again, as if his name has some sense of notoriety tethered to it, disbelief etched into the seams of her voice.

He nods hurriedly. "Yeah, we'll talk later. Right now we have to _go."_

He doesn't know what to expect, but her taking a step back is certainly _not_ it. "I can't. Not without-"

They don't have time. Without another word, Bellamy steps inside and grabs her, slinging her over his shoulder like a pack. "I'm not really giving you much of an option here." He jerks his chin to Raven and the others. "Let's go!"

"No, stop!" the girl pounds on his back as he runs. She may be short, but there's power in those small fists. She's a fighter. A survivor. Bellamy nearly drops her as they round a bend. "Stop, we can't! We _can't leave her!_ "

Her words cut him and he feels it, from his feet and up to the top of his head, like electricity. Like ice. He comes to a stop so abruptly that Raven and Monty don't realize at first that he's no longer running with them. "Bellamy!" Monty shouts, pausing alongside Raven.

But he isn't listening. His focus is trapped on the girl over his shoulder. The girl he sets down and grips the shoulders of long enough to see into those defiant eyes of hers. She's managed to keep hold of her hat, now gripped in one hand, brown hair in disarray.

"Clarke?" he says her name uncertainty, like she is still at risk of disappearing. Clarke's _here_?"

The girl nods emphatically. She fists her hands over his chest and tries to shove him back. It works, if only because Bellamy is crouched down and loses his balance. He regains it enough to haul her back and twist her around again, forcefully but not enough to hurt her. " _Where?_ Where is she?"

The girl shakes her head, eyes glassy with unshed tears. "I don't know! But we can't leave her. I _won't_ leave her behind!"

It's as if she's seen into his soul, the dark part, where those words paralyze his instincts. They make him want to defy everything, even the end of the world.

But that's not what he does. That's not what he did.

Instead he simply tightens his hands around the girl's shoulders, gaze searching hers. Everything in him pulls him back the way they came. Down the corridor and deeper into the ship. Is Clarke in another holding cell nearby? Did he somehow manage to pass her without seeing her? Did he simply just miss her?

 _Did he just miss her?_

He casts a glance across his shoulder as if he can see through the walls, feeling as if he were being pulled, stretched, ripped in two. He has to go back. He has to. He can't leave her again.

 _Not again._

But he knows he will, because their time has run out.

Their time is always running out.

It takes effort to throw his focus at the girl once more. "We're coming back for her," he says. "We're _coming back_. But right now, we have to leave. There are others who will help us, but we can't do anything for Clarke if we're all locked up, all right?" The girl stares at him. His eyes burn into hers, two fires joining in the middle. "We won't lose her again," he vows. " _I won't_ lose her again."

The echo of boots is close enough now to hear over the clatter of noise.

The girl's hands tighten into fists before she prods him once in the chest, hard. "You better be _exactly_ who Clarke promised me you are." Then she turns and runs after the others, tailing behind Monty and Raven as Bellamy watches her go.

Then the boots pound around the corner, and Bellamy has to will himself to follow after the others, even as everything else inside him looks back, into the ship and the memory that has haunted his dreams. The words that played over his mind during his time on the Ring, tucked away in a place so deep he couldn't hope to remove them without removing her too.

 _I left her behind._

And here they play again, like a chorus, as loud on the inside as the siren screaming on the out.


	6. Heart

**I really love the potential relationship between Bellamy and Madi because I honestly think Bellamy might meet her before reuniting with Clarke. On an additional note, the term "tomdom" in Trigedasleng was not coined by me. That beautiful idea belongs to JessieRebecca who was kind enough to allow me to include it, so thank you! Seriously. Brilliant. Please review!**

The fire is out by the time Bellamy and the others are too.

He just manages to duck beneath the the ramp once more when the crush of steps snap through the trees. Slower. Less harried. As they approach, Bellamy overhears snatches of words through the bang of their boots.

"-lad you saw it when you . . . did. Could- . . . been worse." Light. Feminine. They sweep by.

"I don't know, Lev. Ground . . . unpredictable." Male. His voice grates, as if he's been breathing in smoke fumes for too long.

". . . missing . . . discernible cause, though."

"There doesn't need . . . to be."

One by one they go, taking their words with them until the sound narrows to a trickle.

Bellamy's breath is as thin as thread. His hand presses against the underside of the ramp, so cold it burns his skin. This whole place seems to burn like that, as if being frozen has left its people with a perpetual chill. It lingers at the base of his spine like a phantom breath.

A flicker of movement from the corner of his eye draws his attention to the girl standing next to him. She is short enough that the top of the ramp leans against her shoulders. Bellamy can't see her face, submerged in the shadows as it is, but he catches the silhouette of her hat. The glint of silver in her fighter eyes.

They wait until there are no more voices and no more exhales that pound, save for the one in his chest that make his temples throb.

Twenty minutes pass. Maybe more. Bellamy hopes Murphy grants him a little leniency. Waits a little longer before assuming the worst. Then again, it is Murphy. Maybe he should've spoken to Harper instead, their optimist.

Silence stands taught on the air. The barely discernible sound of breathing mixes with his. "Okay," he whispers. He says it low, but it is a fist to the quiet, puncturing it like the word is barbed. _Pop._

With caution, he steps out first. Looks around just enough to be certain there is no one. Sure enough, the clearing is empty. He motions for the others to follow, and the girl is the next one to emerge, her onyx eyes resting like a weight against his.

 _You better be exactly who Clarke promised me you are._

"We're gonna run for those trees," Bellamy tells her and turns to point at the outcropping. He looks back at her. Holds out his hand for hers. "But we have to be fast."

The girl's eyes flash between it and his face. They narrow, momentarily uncertain. But she surprises him when her small, warm fingers slide into his cold ones. "I'm a fast runner, Bellamy Blake."

The girl didn't lie; she is like a jackrabbit compared to Bellamy, still weighted by exhaustion and gravity. Her feet know the soil. They sense the dips and the pieces of rock. They navigate the ground, fitted to them like puzzle pieces. Her instincts are that of a grounder, and it's a bit of a miracle that Bellamy manages to keep by her side at all.

With the rest behind them, they don't stop until their brief exposure is eclipsed by the trees.

Bellamy's insides are fire. There's a stitch is his side and he coughs, the cool night air chafing his throat raw. The girl stands by his side, winded, but not like him. Her hand slips out of his.

Looking at her in the safety of the trees, questions assault him, until he wants to ask everything.

 _Who are you?_

 _How do you know Clarke?_

 _Why did they have you locked up?_

 _Where is Clarke?_

 _Where is Clarke?_

He's about to go for the most basic, her name, when a twig snaps.

Bellamy's heart jumps. He whips toward the sound so fast his senses spin. His hand reaches out, already prepared to push the girl behind him.

"Relax," comes Murphy's voice from the dark, quenching his fear. "It's us."

Bellamy does. He drops his arm. Scrubs a hand down his face. Grit clings to his sweat and he sets down his rifle, as if the few pounds are suddenly much, much more. "Everyone with you?" He does a headcount just to be sure.

Murphy nods. Then his gaze turns to the girl. His eyes widen a fraction in surprise. "And . . . it seems we're plus one." There's a disapproving note in his tone Bellamy can't miss. "Looks like you really took our little conversation to heart."

Bellamy's breath is coming easier. He straightens. "I had no choice."

"There's always a choice."

"She knows Clarke."

The effect is imminent. Murphy's expression goes a little slack. Scepticism is quick to chase it away. "And I suppose she told you that." He gestures to the girl and takes a step towards her.

Bellamy doesn't know why he does it. He can't exactly pinpoint why he moves with Murphy, stepping in front of the child as if expecting him to do anything. Bellamy doesn't mean for it to, but the image of another girl suddenly pops inside his mind. One from a lifetime ago, who sought him out for guidance, and then came to him for protection when his advice ended in blood. He can still see her on a cliff for a brief moment, before she launches herself off it and disappears into the waves below.

Bellamy rips the memory up and shoves the scraps into the far reaches of his mind. He knows the man in front of him. Knows him like a brother. He's watched the gradual changes in Murphy, and though he is by no means a soft man, he is no longer cruel. He is not without an ember of compassion.

"Yeah," says Bellamy, "She did."

Murphy nods, clearly unconvinced. He looks between him and the girl. "And you don't think this could just be some sort of trick? Maybe they're just making their spies shorter now."

"No." Bellamy's voice is even. His gaze flicks to the rest of the group. "She doesn't come from the ship at all."

That draws everyone but him and the girl up short. Over crossed arms, Raven appraises him. "Wait. Bellamy, are you actually suggesting-"

"She's been with Clarke. _Before_ Eligius ever came down. I saw her picture in the lab, in one of Clarke's drawings." A drawing he still carries. He pulls out the crumpled page. "Don't believe me?" he hands it to Murphy, who takes the wad and unfolds it. He stares at it for a long moment, before his eyes look over to the girl, comparing.

In answer, he gives it to Raven.

That's all it takes. They're in agreement, even if they're all baffled by it. "How?" Raven asks, mouth opened in surprise as she stares back at him before Echo plucks the page from her fingers.

The question echoes one of the many Bellamy has. He shifts his gaze back to the girl in question, as if expecting her to take the cue. Talk. To unfold all her secrets for them like the drawing, uncrumple the answers to every one of his questions.

She blinks at him. At them all.

"Hey. Kid," says Murphy, peering a bit around Bellamy. "Mind telling us how you're alive?"

The little girl looks at him, and the tension seems to sharpen. "My name is _Madi,_ " she replies, and though there's a small quiver in her voice, she doesn't break away from his gaze. Her hands knot into fists and she tilts her chin up. "Not ' _Kid'."_

The edge of Murphy's lips lift in a half-smirk. "Sorry. Madi. Mind telling us how you're alive and not pushing up daisies like the rest of the human race?"

The girl-Madi-stares pointedly at him. "I can tell you everything. I want to. _After_ we get Clarke." She whirls on Bellamy, all five-foot-two of her a storm. "Like you promised."

Her gaze burns him like coals. "And we will. But first, we need to know more about you, and what exactly it is you know." _Because I need to know all of it._ He may be desperate, but he is not stupid. He won't risk losing Clarke again, which means he needs every detail. Every piece.

"It doesn't take a genius to guess they're the ones that took you, right?"

Biting her lip, Madi nods.

Bellamy scrutinizes her, as if he can unearth everything he needs to know if only he searches those eyes hard enough. But it's dark, and he cannot see her as clearly as he'd like. He balls his hands into fists, fighting the desire to ask everything he wants to. He has to remind himself that she is only a child, despite her strength. "This is probably your first time seeing so many people at once, so . . . maybe it'll help if you know a little bit more about us." He gestures toward the woman who stands closest to him, arms still crossed, brows still pulled together in confusion. "Madi, this is-"

"Raven Reyes," Madi interrupts, eyes flashing over to her. Bellamy blinks in surprise. "You're an engineer, not to mention one wicked awesome mechanic." Those eyes jump to the man who holds the drawing. "You're Monty Greene." He looks up at the mention of his name. "Agriculture specialist and technician. Harper McIntyre, medic. John Murphy . . ." she looks back at the skeptic of the group, and there seems to be a note of lightness in her voice. "Survivor and scavenger, like Clarke said. And you guys, Emori and Echo, right?" she appraises them from head to toe, almost wistfully. "You're the first born-grounders I've seen since Praimfaya." She stares at them for a moment longer before finally returning her attention to Bellamy. "And Bellamy Blake. Leader. Brother. Protector." Perhaps it's his imagination, but he thinks he detects a hint of nervousness there, maybe even awe.

"Wow," says Raven, clearly impressed. "Kid has some intel."

Madi shrugs, almost shyly. "Why wouldn't I? I've practically known you all since I was five."

Bellamy casts a swift glance at Raven and clears his throat, made inexplicably uncomfortable by this knowledge. "How much has Clarke told you?" What he's really asking is _How much do you know about me?_

It's as if she's read the question herself, because she wets her lips, hesitant, and says, " _Tomdom."_

All the breath inside Bellamy evaporates. He's been around Echo and Emori long enough to understand Trigedasleng, and its word for _heart._ It tells him that Madi knows. Not just about him or the others.

 _"You've got such a big heart, Bellamy. People follow you. You inspire them. Because of_ this."

She knows about everything.

"There's a lot you can tell a person over six years," she says, as if to explain. She kicks a loose stone away with the toe of her boot. "Well, more like three. It's not like she went into the gritty details when I was a kid. Back then you were more stories to me than actual people. You know, _heroes_."

There is that word again. "Heroes," he mutters. The word tastes bitter. "We've been a lot of things, but that isn't one of them."

"True," Madi deadpans without a hint of remorse. "But Clarke is. She saved you. She saved _me_. And now it's our turn to save her, so," her attention skips from him to the others with a determination sharp enough to cut. "What's our plan?"

"Hold it," Raven says, taking a step forward. She drops her arms. Loops her thumb inside the pocket of her tool belt. "Before we go storming the castle, we need a little more information. Anything you can give us. And you can start by telling us a bit more about yourself, since you seem to know so much already about the rest of us. It's only fair we get the same."

"She said she saved you," Bellamy marvels. "That you've known us since you were . . . younger. She must've found you, what, a year after Praimfaya? How?" He doesn't say it, but the idea is a relief so profound it makes him feel like he can breathe. She wasn't alone. Not for all those years. She had someone.

She has someone.

Madi quirks a brow at him. "Seven and a half months. I'm almost twelve."

"How'd you survive?'

She straightens, pulling back her shoulders. And for a split second, Bellamy can feel someone else standing in her place. Her nearness. This girl is proof of it, because that one movement, that subtle show of strength, is so indubitably _Clarke._ "How do you think?"

" _Natblida,_ " comes Echo's reply. "You're a nightblood."

"Yup," says Madi. "My parents never wanted me involved in the clan training, so when they found out, they left. It's what saved me from Praimfaya until Clarke came. Which brings us back to the important stuff, like what it is we're gonna do to get her out."

Bellamy shifts his weight to the other foot, as if unable to keep still. "And in order to do that, we have to know exactly what it is we're dealing with so we don't fail. We need to know the layout of the place. Why these . . . _people_ . . . wanted you both in the first place. What did they need you for?"

Madi stares at him, as if the answer is so painfully obvious. "They took her because they know all about us."

Tension electrifies the air. The hairs on Bellamy's arms rise as his heart seems to fall to his feet. "They heard her messages."

Slowly, Madi nods.

"And the bunker?"

She shakes her head. "Clarke wouldn't tell them where it is, and she never mentioned where in her messages because she hoped she was talking to _you_ , and it's not like you don't know where it's at. It's probably why they took me. If Clarke thinks I'm in danger, she'll talk." She points back, in the direction of the ship. "But I'm not there anymore. Which means-"

"Which means we just took their only leverage to get Clarke to speak," Bellamy finishes for her.

"Doesn't that buy her some time?" asks Monty. He returns the drawing to Bellamy who takes it back with gingerly hands. "It might, it might not. But I don't plan on waiting long enough to find out."

"So . . . does this mean we can start making a plan?" asks Madi, the desperation in her voice palpable.

Bellamy folds the drawing again and returns it to his pocket. He looks at her. "Yeah, Madi. And it better be a good one."

* * *

"No, that's a stupid plan."

"It could work, Raven."

" _Could._ In theory." With Echo's knife, Raven uses the edges to pry open the box of compost. Already she's stripped off a piece of fabric from some of the spare clothing tucked inside her bag to use as a small, makeshift bundle. "Theories are disproved all the time. We need something _solid_ , Bellamy."

He glances away, towards the cluster of trees they camp inside. Dawn is beginning to break, cracking open behind the mountain ridge and leaking a brilliant ombre. The others will be awake soon. "When have we ever operated on solid plans, Raven?" he asks, returning his gaze to her. "Never, because they don't exist. Plan involves risk, every time."

She jiggles the knife harder. "Fine, then let's come up with one that has considerably less risk, because what you're talking about doing isn't just stupid, it's suicidal, even for you."

"It's not like we have a lot of options here. I'm doing what I think is best."

She shakes her head angrily as she forces the knife back and forth like a pendulum. "Please. You're doing this because you are desperate and desperation makes for bad decision making. You should know, or don't you remember the last time you got a crazy idea in your head and what it cost you, not to mention the two hundred other people?"

Bellamy draws back. It's a low blow, one Raven is more than willing to throw if it means keeping him alive. You can't be dead and hurt after all. And maybe she senses it, because she pauses in her knife work. "This isn't a grounder army," he says.

Her eyes snap to him."No, it's a Nightblood army. Mind telling me how that's any better?"

"It's better because right now, they don't know we're here."

"Which is the one advantage we lose when you get back on that ship to try and get Clarke out." She shakes her head again and her eyes turn soft. "I know you want her back, Bellamy. We all do. But she didn't save our lives just for you to throw yours away now."

Another blow. Bellamy's jaw clenches. He knows she is afraid, and so he pushes past it. "You'll be coming back from the bunker by the time we go in. Your distraction-"

"-Is all based on _chance_." She starts working the blade again.

"What other choice do we have?"

"The sane one. We all go to the bunker, blast it open, and then if . . . if everyone is there we come up with a plan to get Clarke out."

But Bellamy is already shaking his head. "We don't have that kind of time."

"You mean you're not willing to _risk_ the time."

"You're right," he admits. "I'm not."

The knife isn't opening the box like she wanted. Frustrated, Raven yanks it out and throws it on the ground. She stands and runs a hand over the crown of her head. Shifts away from him. Shifts back. "What am I supposed to tell Octavia?"

Nothing in Bellamy's voice gives him away. "You tell her I'm coming. And then you tell Abby that I'm bringing her daughter with me."

Raven looks like she's about to argue, but then she stops. She knows there's little point in it. Bellamy's as stubborn as her, after all. "There's nothing I can say that'll make you change your mind," she says. "Is there?" Though she asks, she already knows.

He wants to tell her he's sorry, but maybe he's not. At least, not in the way he is to someone else. "I have to do this, Raven."

She purses her lips and blinks at her tears. "You always do. Just . . . promise me you'll be careful. I can't lose anymore family, okay?"

He tries a reassuring smile but it falters. He walks up to her and pulls her into a tight embrace. "You won't."

Raven returns the hug before retracting enough to look him in the eyes. Unshed tears seem to make her look braver. "Bring her back," she says.

She says it because she already knows exactly what he's thinking.

That he won't stop until he does.


	7. Walk the Line

**Hey, Guys! Sorry it's taken me so long to post. Merry late Christmas and Happy New Year! Hope you all had/are having an awesome winter. This story probably has two to three more chapters left to go. Sorry for dragging out the reunion, but I didn't want it to feel rushed; I want to savor it. Plus, I'd like for it to seem as realistic as possible. Thank you, and please review!**

He tells himself the plan will work. Despite Raven's words. Despite their truth, he tells himself it will work, because it _has_ to.

There is no fire this time, but it may be just as wily. Get in, get Clarke. Wait for the distraction of what Bellamy hopes is nine hundred grounders and one hundred Sky people on the outside. Get out.

Simple enough.

"Stupid idea," Murphy echoes Raven's earlier words, looking skeptical. One of the rifles dangles from his shoulder and he grips the strap loosely, eyeing Bellamy with cynicism.

It is early, with dawn fast approaching. Touches of light stretch shadows across the ground, bruising the sky a pale violet. It is like a stopwatch over Bellamy's head, counting down the minutes. He doesn't know how many they have.

"How do you plan on getting past security?" asks Monty. He looks even less confident than Murphy, brows pulled tightly together. "I mean no offense, but it's not like you're all that great with wires."

"Just because I need to get past a door doesn't mean I need to be the one who opens it," explains Bellamy, gripping his own gun. And even if he is the one to do just that, he can, if only because of Raven's thumbnail detonations she managed to assemble earlier in the day. They would not be enough to blow the door open, but to fry the lock pad? No problem. He just hopes frying it doesn't keep the door sealed. Raven assures him it shouldn't.

Hopefully.

"Without letting anyone know you're there?" Monty does not bother to hide his incredulity, even less, his doubt. His words are doused in both. "Bellamy, that's-"

"I have a plan," Bellamy repeats for the umpteenth time, as surely as he has the drawing, still folded inside his pocket.

Monty's eyes are full of worry. "Which is starting to look a lot less promising."

Bellamy shakes off the uncertainty. He can't risk doubting the only idea he has. The only alternative is to wait, and he can't do that without risking Clarke's life. Slower does not mean better. Inaction doesn't solve problems.

"Get back as fast as you can," he tells Murphy and Monty. He turns away from them before they can protest again. Or worse, demand to be taken along. Monty would go. Murphy certainly would. But it's Bellamy's plan. If it fails, he wants it to fail with him, and him alone.

That is, until Madi's voice pokes up from the campsite.

"I'm going with Blake," she says, in a voice of iron.

Bellamy's eyes are on her before he's even thought to look. He can see the determination in her face, burning like flares in her eyes. It is odd, how much this girl should remind him of Octavia. And she does, with her defiant gaze and her stories, with her past of being treated as a secret, not because she was a liability, but because she was precious.

But she reminds him of others too. He sees Charlotte and Clarke. The names of twenty-six children he does not even know. He sees a young Emori. He sees a world tucked inside this girl, thriving long after it's ended.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," he says, because he's watched too many children die. And she still is one, no matter how many lifetimes fit inside the things she's undoubtedly seen.

"Please!" Madi says, voice below a shout. "You _need_ me there! I'm the only one that knows that ship."

Bellamy gives her the courtesy of facing her entirely, if only to see his seriousness. If it's one thing he hates, it's keeping those from going after their loved ones. It's treating anyone like a prisoner who's done nothing to deserve it.

"Not happening," he says.

But Madi doesn't seem disheartened. In fact, her hands clench. He sees the muscle in her jaw feather before they relax and her gaze cools to a molten pleading. "No. Don't you understand?" She comes closer, until she stands right in front of him, eyes peering into his face. "It _has_ to be you."

He won't go down to her height, because she's bold enough for the both of them to meet him right where he's at. "And why's that?"

The looks in her eyes is full of a deep understanding, so deep it brushes across his soul. "Because you're the only one who wants her back as much as I do."

* * *

It's a stupid plan.

Maybe it always has been, but with the added presence of an almost-twelve-year-old girl, the holes in his plan seem to be made that much bigger, until it's a sieve he hopes they all don't slip through. Which is why Bellamy's considering leaving Madi behind. He wants to. But then he comes to the conclusion that it would probably put her in more danger. At least with her near, he can offer her some protection.

He's also come to another conclusion that Madi was coming with him with or without his consent. It's possible he just tells himself that to ease the guilt of bringing a kid with him on a potentially lethal mission, but he catches the smugness in her features and knows; she would be walking in with him one way or another.

It is morning when the others disband from camp into two groups. Raven, Murphy, and Echo will head to the bunker for Raven to blow off the debris while Monty, Emori, and Harper return to what's left of the rocket. There, Monty will blast the thrusters, or create enough havoc which will act as a signal to Raven to start detonating. It's another distraction tactic, keeping the eyes of Eligius on a landing that Monty will simulate to look like a crash. Meanwhile, Raven will clear the bunker. Tomorrow Monty's first blast detonates, and that is Bellamy's cue. He can only hope Echo is right about the cliff faces and that the sound of Raven's bombs is mistaken for Monty's.

It's a good a few hours before Bellamy and Madi plan to move, and they set up camp high enough to see above the distant treeline but not so far as to lose the ship in the shadows.

Bellamy doesn't light a fire, and he doesn't have to tell Madi not to either. The girl is smart; she knows things without needing any reminders from him.

When evening pulls the sun behind the mountain ridge and stains the sky a rich, deep blue, Bellamy situates himself on the ground. He doesn't have a cot to unwrap, so he lets the cooling dirt seep into his back, littered with pine needles and leafy mulch that both pillow and prickle his bare neck. He is the only noise beside the distant buzzing of crickets. Then he stills, and they are on their own. The silence isn't awkward, but it is heavy, like the world is lonesome for familiar voices.

"Do you know how to use a knife?" he asks Madi, who lay at a right angle by his head. He doesn't want her defenseless, even as he remembers the last time he gave a little girl a knife.

She tilts her head toward him, hat pulled low over her brows. Moonlight casts a glow over her rounded face, crisscrossed with shadows from the overhang of branches. "I'm better with a rifle."

That draws a grimace from him, because he thought as much, and kept Monty's along with his own. He nods. Questions twirl inside his head. He doesn't ask about Clarke, even though he's eager to talk about her. Hungry for conversation of her. A part of him is scared to, because it puts more fuel to the already bonfire lit up on the inside, and he can't have it blaze so high only to have it smothered.

But Madi must feel that fire burning through the ground, because her next words strike deep and sudden. "Clarke used to tell me stories when I was little," she says quietly, like she needs to talk of her too. "They used to keep the nightmares away."

"Of Praimfaya?"

The back of her head shifts in a nod. "She'd tell me of princesses hung up in the stars and ships that flew through thousands of small suns. She'd tell me of you guys."

Bellamy stares up at the sky, flecked with points of white light. "It's nice having someone to tell stories to."

Madi shifts around, craning her chin up to look at him more closely. Her gaze is suddenly doe-eyed, full of curiosity. "Did you tell stories to Octavia?" she asks.

The mention of his sister lodges in his throat and he clears it. He can't help but think it strange, how this young girl knows the most important facets of his life so intimately. It's jarring. "Yeah," his reply sounds gruff. "They kept away her nightmares too." _For a little while at least._

"What sort of things did you tell her about?"

Bellamy doesn't even have to think about it. "She liked hearing about Greek mythology. The stories of Perseus and Augustus. But I'd tell her of the ground, too. Earth, and what it would be like. What it was supposed to be like."

"Was it everything you wanted it to be?"

A shooting star streaks across the sky. It takes him a long moment to answer that question. "Yes and no. It was big, and we were free down here. I guess I wasn't expecting all of the . . . the problems."

"You can say war. I know about all of them. The 100. The men hiding beneath the mountain. The woman in red. All the clans buried in the bunker." At the look of surprise he sends her, she shrugs. "I wasn't the only one who had nightmares. Talking about it helped her like her stories helped me." Madi stares at him for a long moment, those eyes both pleading and fierce. "I need her back."

Bellamy gently nudges her with his elbow. "And we'll get her back. One thing I've learned about Clarke is to stop underestimating her. She doesn't give up. Those guys won't let her know that they lost you, which means she'll keep fighting."

Madi bites her lip. Her next words hit him right between the ribs. "She doesn't blame you, you know. For leaving. She knew you had to. She always said you did the right thing. Believing that you were out there and okay . . . well, she always said it gave her hope."

It takes effort for Bellamy to hold the girl's gaze, like it weighs more than the sky. As much as the world with no one but the two of them in it. "I spent a long time believing that she was gone. Not a day went by that I didn't think of her." No matter how hard he tried not to.

Madi studies him with pensive eyes. "Is that what your nightmares are about, Bellamy Blake?"

Bellamy's mouth goes a little dry. He is glass in front of this girl, made transparent and vulnerable by the things she knows. To her, he is the boy who kept his sister a secret. Who grew into a soldier and came down from the stars to play leader alongside someone who acted as his head as he let his heart run rampant, paving behind him a road of red.

"Yeah," he answers after a long moment. He lies back down and returns his eyes skyward, to the thumbnail of moon and the pinpricks of light he drifted among only days ago. "Some of them."

* * *

He wakes from dreams of launching rockets and broken satellites. Bellamy's surprised he managed to nod off through the chaos of nerves jumbled inside, but he's glad for it; the more energy, the better.

Madi is already awake, checking over the rifles. Her small hands break open the stock. She peers down the barrel. Bellamy watches her a moment.

Without looking at him, she tosses him something. One of the bitter roots he collected a couple days before. He takes a bite without hesitating. He'd find the taste a reprieve, if he could taste it all; he's too focused on the task at hand, at what it is they are about to do, and the little girl he will be taking with him to do it.

Bellamy's ready to go right now. He _wants_ to, but they still have hours left until noon, when Raven will begin her work on the bunker, and Monty will begin his work to cover hers.

The five minutes he spends finishing off the root is enough to make him impatient.

"Is it weird," Bellamy asks, "Seeing all these people after so many years?" He imagines it's what Octavia felt like going to the dance, after sixteen years spent alone under the floor, with no one but her mom and brother to keep her company.

Madi shrugs. With a flick of her small wrists, she locks the gun. "I guess a little. Sometimes I would have to remind myself that it wasn't going to be just me and Clarke here forever; you would come. At least, you were supposed to." She frowns and looks up at him. "Why did it take you so long? If you'd come a year ago, we would've been more prepared." There is no accusation in her voice, it's just a statement. But it's truth finds a mark nonetheless, and Bellamy has to breathe past the stitch it sends.

"We were . . . pulled out of orbit," he says. "Took Raven time to stabilize the Ark, but by that point we had drifted off course and we couldn't use the reserves we found on the Ark to get back to where we were and still have some left to land."

"So . . . what did you do?"

Bellamy doesn't need a mirror to know the grim look he wears. He can feel it. "We waited."

He will never forget the expression on Raven's face when she broke the news to them that they would not be going home that week. That Bellamy would not be seeing his sister. Not yet. " _One more year,"_ Raven said. " _We can make it one more year."_

"Waited to float closer?" asks Madi.

Bellamy nods, discarding the root over his shoulder. "Yeah."

Madi purses her lips. She drapes her arms around her knees and hugs them close. "That sucks."

That understatement is enough to pull a glimmer of a smirk out of him. "Yeah, it did. For what it's worth, I'm sorry." He looks pointedly into her small, round face as he says it, if only for her to see the sincerity in his. "I wish we could've come down sooner."

Madi hugs her knees a little tighter. "Me too." Her eyes flicker ahead, toward the trees. "But you're here now. I know we can get her out, if we work together."

Bellamy purses his lips. Resists the pull to close his eyes and shake it all away. _Together._ An old ghost.

* * *

At first, Bellamy thinks it's thunder.

The sound comes from far away but digs deep, from the sky and into the ground, until it seems to tremble with it. Raven has started.

Bellamy is on his feet before he's even though to move. He's motioning to Madi for them to start moving when clap echoes, cracking like a whip over rock. It is louder though; Monty. Both explosions echo oddly along the clifface, and relief courses through Bellamy when their locations sound nearly impossible to peg. Monty's smoke will surely help with that.

Now it's his turn.

"Madi?" he asks as he moves through the trees, making sure she hasn't lost track of him, or him of her.

The girl's response is a determined, "We're coming, Clarke."

It's just after noon, and the sun hangs heavy in the sky, blanketing the ground in a light warmth. There's still a hint of cold though, and it seems to grow more pronounced the closer they come to the ship, until that hint has become a bite.

Bellamy crouches behind the last bit of cover standing between them and the ship. He turns to Madi. "Now remember-"

"I'm supposed to follow right behind you and do everything you say."

Bellamy nods. "If something splits us up, we-"

"We meet back here."

"Good. And if, for some reason, I'm not back here when you are, what do you do?"

Her bravado falters. She hesitates.

"Madi?"

"I . . . I don't wait for you. I meet back up with the others instead."

Bellamy studies her carefully. "That last one is the most important. Got it?"

She dips her chin once, clearly reluctant.

He nods again and steels himself. Tries to calm his racing heart to no avail. "Then let's go."

This time, getting on the ship is harder.

Without the cover of darkness, vulnerability trills a cold finger up Bellamy's spine as they wait to climb aboard. But daylight had its advantages, like being able to _see,_ and he's counted twenty five people coming from the ship. He held back until the crowd dwindled down to a trickle, expecting more. Over a hundred, like Raven said.

Nearly standing upright beside him, her hat pressing into the roof of the ramp, Madi points at her eyes and then points above. Understanding dawns on him, and Bellamy brings up a knee for her to stand on. Carefully she climbs up and peeks over.

Her reply is a single thumbs up.

The sudden movement of the ramp nearly knocks her off his knee.

They are closing the door.

Bellamy doesn't hesitate. Can't risk the time to. He lifts her all the way on the top of the ramp, glimpsing her roll inside before he jumps up himself, fingers scrabbling against the metal as the ramp lifts him from the ground.

His heart pounds against the floor, ricocheting to his head. Sweat collects as he strains his fingers forward, looking for purchase, for something to grab other than smooth floor.

 _No!_

The word is a shout inside him. He didn't come all this way just to be cut in two by a _door,_ because there is no chance on Earth that he is letting go and leaving Madi inside this place alone. _No chance._

The side of the ship looms to his right.

"Bellamy, come on!" Madi whispers, the panic clear in her voice. For a moment, he imagines he is hearing Octavia.

He kicks his legs out just as the side of the ship is ready to close. With one last grunt of effort, Bellamy manages to hook his leg around the ramp and tucks in before momentum pushes him into a roll.

The metal floor slams into his shoulders and he bites his lip, but forces his mouth to stay closed. His breath is rapid when he hits the ground and he stares up at the metal ceiling for a moment.

A small face appears in front of him, blocking out the light. Brown eyes blink down at him, wide with fear. "Are you okay?" For all her worry, she remembers to keep her voice down.

Bellamy nods, because the world is spinning and it takes a breath for it to right itself on its axis. Then her little hand is reaching out to his and he takes it, stumbling back to his feet.

Madi's eyes are still wide. "You're bleeding." She gestures to the corner of his lip.

Bellamy smears it away on the back of his hand. Looks back to the place they came from.

"How're we gonna get out?" Madi asks the question in his mind.

Bellamy puts his back to the door. "One problem at a time." Because it is a problem, and he can't spare the time right now trying to think up a solution, or the worry of not being able to produce one. "Which way?" His eyes rake over the space again, down the corridor he took last time to another that looks less familiar. A flight of metal stairs are secured to the far left corner, something he didn't notice in the short moment he was here last time.

Madi takes the lead, hand gripped around the rifle. "Over here." She starts up the stairs.

Bellamy's quick to sidestep in front of her, grabbing the metal rail for support.

At the top sits a steel door, and relief washes over him to find that it unlocks from both sides. A small mercy, as if recompense for the closing ramp.

Madi is so lithe, she manages to smothers the sound of her footsteps like dirt on a fire. But no matter how hard Bellamy tries, the echo of his boots against the floor are like the bombs going off outside. _Boom. Boom. Boom._ Bellamy half expects the corridor to flood with people. For a shout of intruders to be raised. But it doesn't. The corridor stays empty, save for the bombing of his soles on metal and the pound of his heart against his ribs.

 _We're coming, Clarke._

When the corridor splits off into three directions, Madi sneaks around him and stands just before the divergence, eyes cutting from one to the other.

Bellamy's about to ask which way when she takes the one leading straight ahead. They must be getting _somewhere,_ because her silent steps pick up speed, treading a note of their quietness in her haste.

"Madi," he hisses. He tries to move faster, and his steps turn louder. _Boom, boom, boom._

Another break. She stops long enough to look back to him before taking the corridor branching left. He loses sight of her for a moment.

Bellamy grits his teeth. Holds his rifle closer to himself. He tries to move quick and careful, but that doesn't often work, and he only gets one at the expense of the other. "Madi!"

Around the corridor he spots her again. " _Madi!"_ he repeats, a little louder. _Boom, boom, boom._

She gestures forward with the barrel of her gun. "They took us down this way."

He risks walking a little faster to catch up. _Boom, boom, boom._ "I thought I told you to stay behind me. Stop-"

Boot steps that are not his own dry up the words. For a moment, the sound of them gets lost in the tandem of his, and Bellamy thinks maybe it was an echo; just his imagination toying with his fears. But when he pauses, the noises separate, and the echoes of approaching feet continues on after his have stopped.

Bellamy's eyes snap back to Madi at the same time hers meet his. Then they drift just beyond her, hovering over the top of her black beanie. There is no break in the corridor for them to disappear down. Nowhere for them to go but back, and he is closer than she is.

The sound of boots chase away his thoughts. They consume his fears. They even pluck away his focus on Clarke. It all shifts to the girl a little ways ahead of him, unable to run away as quietly as she can walk.

It might as well be a cliff.

And just like that, Bellamy is moving. _Boom, boom, boom._ In seven long strides he reaches her. One arm ensnares her around the waist so suddenly it steals her gasp, and before she can even look back at the person approaching, Bellamy whips around. He puts his back between the coming strangers and her, and with the last few steps he has before they round the corner he uses shoving Madi back the way they came. He glances back just long enough to catch the toe of a dark brown boot.

A shout rises from behind him, jumbled against the echoing walls.

The pound of his boots detonate against the metal. _Boom, boom, BOOM._

"Go!" Bellamy orders Madi with one last push, doing his best to keep her small form shielded from view. She stumbles but doesn't fall, just feet away from the corner. "Wait for the ramp, then get to the others. Find Raven."

Madi shakes her head and takes a tiny step forward. "No, Bel-"

"Remember what I told you?"

Her wide eyes are like mirrors, and Bellamy can see his own face in the reflection of her tears. She gives one curt nod.

"Go," he says again. "Get the others. That is how you save us."

There is no time. The force of pounding feet vibrate across the floor and Bellamy looks back just as something hard connects with his shoulder, close to his neck. The impact darkens his vision for a moment and he sees a shadow reach for Madi.

Bellamy pulls off his rifle and slams the butt of it into the man's gut. When he bends in half from the pain, Bellamy cocks the rifle and aims.

Killing does not come easily, as it shouldn't. And Bellamy only hesitates for a breath, enough to recognize what needs to be done and why, because Madi needs to get out, and they can't have the ship being put on lock down for a little girl who works well as leverage. If they want leverage, let it be him.

Bellamy pulls the trigger.

The explosion of noise cracks down the corridor as the man hits the wall washed in red.

Bellamy glances back at Madi. He nods.

And with one last fleeting look, Madi turns away and disappears around the corner, just as a pair of large hands seize Bellamy's arms. His rifle is ripped away. His hands are twisted behind his back before he has a chance to see the person's face. Hot pain lances up his arms. A moment later he's slammed into the wall. The man he shot lies at his feet. Bellamy glimpses a hand reaching down, searching around the man's collar for a pulse.

He must not find one, because that same hand reaches up and yanks Bellamy back by the hair at the same time something smashes against his leg. There is a crack, and Bellamy doesn't even hear his own scream until it returns to him on an echo.


	8. Head

**All right, Guys. Next chapter! I think this will only be a chapter or two longer. I could take it further, but I originally didn't consider doing so because I thought the 100 would be premiering in February, but it's not. April is too far. Also, little side note, if there are any major grammatical errors, it's because I didn't want to edit before posting. Anyway, please review! Thank you!**

The pounding in his head matches the drumbeat of steps around him. Pain stabs at his temples and his eyes water, but Bellamy tries to blink it away. He resists the desire to look behind him for Madi. Instead, he risks a glance at the men flanking either side of him, their hands hooked through his arm.

He catches a glimpse of dark skin and even darker eyes, the color of ash.

Bellamy doesn't even see the fist when it comes.

* * *

At first, he thinks he's blind.

Something sharp prods him in his right shoulder and even though Bellamy feels himself blinking, everything remains dark, save for distant flecks of light. Is he under the stars again? Where's Madi?

Oh. His head is covered with a hood. Madi, as far as he knows, is safe. Safer than him, at least.

"He's awake."

The voice is like a bolt of lightning, igniting his nerves. Pulling him to alertness. It's deep and gravelly, the kind that scrapes over words. Bellamy raises his head despite the pain still tapping hammers against his skull. Tries to pull his hands up, ready to defend himself, but they stay wrapped behind him, secured by something he can't see. He doubts he still has Raven's pocket bombs on him.

It's not the most promising situation.

"Wh-" _Who are you?_ Bellamy almost asks. He wants them to identify themselves. It's what the survivor in him wants. But the soldier part tells him to wait, so he locks his jaw shut. _Don't give anything away._

That prodding snakes up to his head and pokes him in the jaw, earning a hot lance of pain. "Anyone in there?"

Bellamy can't stop the hiss that escapes him.

The high keen of metal against metal sounds, like someone is dragging something over to him. Bellamy hears an exhale. There's an acrid smoke on the air, the kind that digs into Bellamy's lungs. He tries not to cough.

Suddenly the darkness disappears as the hood is pulled off and Bellamy is blinking in a place not much brighter than the hood had been. A single illumination from above seems to be the only source of the light in the small room.

Bellamy turns his focus on the man in front of him, tall and brutish looking, with the shadow of a beard and crew cut hair the color of salt. In his hands is Bellamy's own rifle; the source of the prodding.

The man sees him eyeing it and smirks. "Been a long time since I handled one of these." His fingers brush down the cherry wood stock like a caress. "Last was in a Wyoming winter. Caught myself a beautiful buck. Want to know where I hit him?" This time, the man doesn't prod Bellamy but puts the barrel against his forehead, hard enough for the cool steel to bite into his skin. "Right between the eyes."

"Enough, Beckett," says someone else. He steps into Bellamy's periphery, enough for him to catch those cool, dark eyes again. They both wear a similar ensemble of cargo pants and sleeveless shirts, the color of the night sky. It makes the brutish man-Beckett-stand out while it seems to swallow the other man into the shadows.

The barrel doesn't leave Bellamy's forehead for another moment. Then, with a small shove that digs the barrel in deeper, the man finally withdraws the rifle. He tilts his head to the side, analyzing Bellamy. He has a square face, like a mountain lion's. "You wouldn't happen to know anything of those bombings by the bay, would you?"

"Beckett," repeats the other man, a warning in his tone, "Stop engaging." Unlike Beckett's, his voice does not scrape. It is smooth; water over stones. But there is steel in it, too. It's the sort of voice that doesn't have to be raised high to be heard.

Or listened to, judging by the other man's response. He leans against the wall, still holding the rifle, gaze digging, digging, digging into Bellamy. "It's taking too long."

"He'll get here when he gets here."

"After he cleans up a mess we could already have the answers to if you'd just let me get them myself."

The other man looks unbothered. In fact, Bellamy would even say relaxed, considering his unaffected posture and expression that, so far, has given nothing away. It is like a mask, and Bellamy has the unnerving feeling that he is far more dangerous than the boulder of a man set on crushing him into dust.

"If you want to kill him, kill him." The shadow man says dismissively. "But I don't think I need to remind you what McCreary does to those who go against his orders."

Bellamy tucks away every bit if information they give, but one look from the expressionless man tells Bellamy he knows exactly what it is he's doing, and that no information given is given with the intent of keeping him alive.

The man's threat must be enough of a deterrent, because with a frustrated shake of his head, Beckett doesn't advance on Bellamy but remains seated. "Don't move," warns Beckett. Without a glance at the other man, he leans forward and pats Bellamy on the cheek, hard enough to sting. "Wouldn't want to accidentally shoot you now, would I?" He leans back, balancing the rifle over his knee and trailing the barrel on Bellamy's chest. "Best to keep you all together, until we can really pull you apart."

* * *

The impatience is worse than the pain in Bellamy's head. The distant echo of bombs continues for what feels like hours, but Raven doesn't have a perpetual supply of explosives, and it must only be an hour at most. Still, every moment stirs Bellamy's impatience faster, makes his blood run hotter.

The silence of the two men has almost been enough for Bellamy to say something. But he won't. Not yet. So until then, he waits, letting the throbbing of his head beat out an angry chorus that fuels him. He hasn't come from space to die. He didn't make a promise to a little girl just to break it.

So he sits, and he waits, calm on the outside as a storm brews on the inside, looking not at the expressionless man leaning against the wall or the gun lilting over a knee, but right at Beckett, who is years more out of practice than Bellamy is.

It's in the middle of this when the door finally opens, and Bellamy's eyes snap to the newcomer. He, like the others, is dressed in dark clothes only with a jacket, its collar pulled close around his throat. His brown hair cropped closely to his scalp. Stubble lines his jaw, making his cheeks look more sallow than they are. He can't be older than Beckett, yet his superiority is almost tangible, breathing a cold draft into the room.

The light from above paints any groove in his face black, darkening his eyes to pitch. The presence of the other two fade in his as he appraises Bellamy. "And who is this?" he asks in a flat, flat voice that lilts. Spanish, Bellamy guesses.

"Trespasser," says Beckett. "Caught him sneaking down the south corridor."

"Trespasser?" the man-McCreary, Bellamy presumes-asks. There's a touch of humor there, barely present at all, like breath on glass. "Now there's something unexpected. Most everything is, I suppose. Earth is not . . . how I remember." He crouches down before Bellamy, eyes scouring his. Bellamy notices the scars on his hands, some old, some fresh. Traces of soot smudge his face.

"Perhaps you would be willing to explain some of it to me. Like who you are. Yes, that is a good place to start. So then. Who are you?"

Bellamy looks back at him. Sweeps his gaze from top to bottom. Says nothing.

McCreary tilts his head. Smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Ah, you're a soldier."

Bellamy almost jolts at that.

"Taking notice of the military-grade boots. Undoubtedly scoping for weapons. It would be unfair for us to presume those who have survived on earth haven't done so out of stupidity. We learned that with the other one."

It's an off-handed comment. So offhanded, it nearly blindsights Bellamy and he has to blink to readjust himself. He struggles to remain stoic, to school his face into an unreadable mask.

The man McCreary watches him with fathomless eyes. The ghost of a smirk touches his lips and Bellamy doesn't want to know what that means.

Silence.

Bellamy waits, tense, expecting the man to start up on more questions. To begin the inevitable torture, because that's where these scenarios always lead. The memories of his time spent in Mount Weather don't haunt him like others do, but that doesn't mean they are any less sharp.

As if to hurry it along, Bellamy tilts his chin up, challenging. Would it be so bad if he let this man see the fire in his eyes?

A silent war wages between them, until McCreary stands. Without looking at him, he tells the shadow man, "Axl, escort our trespasser to the conference room. I think it's a more suitable place for a little chat, don't you?"

The shadow man doesn't answer but peels from the wall and again hooks his hand back through Bellamy's arm. Beckett appears on his right, barrel kissing his spine.

McCreary's next words echo to Bellamy from behind him, so low he nearly misses them completely. "You people are hard to break," he says, almost admirably. "But not impossible. No, not impossible."

* * *

A hood is thrown over his head again and Bellamy is led back into a corridor he can't see, down, down, up. He tries to memorize the pattern, counting off the paces in his head. But he can't even be sure that where he had been was closer to the exit. Maybe he's getting closer now, and escaping only to go this way would lead him to a dead end.

But this is all he can do right now, so he counts.

 _Forty paces. Left._

 _Twenty paces. Right._

Bellamy's yanked to a stop. There's a hum before a buzz and the scraping of metal sounds. Door.

 _Ten. Left._

 _Nineteen. Down._

Stop. Door.

 _Hum. Buzz. Scrape._

They halt another ten paces later and a third door opens, but this one doesn't buzz. Bellamy is led through and he notes the way the echo of his boots hush a little. A smaller room, he wages.

He's proven right a moment later when the hood is removed again and he finds himself in a square room, bigger than the last one but still a little tight for comfort. It's a bit brighter too, the circadian lights highlighting the ovular steel table in the center of the room, bolted down to the floor, along with a handful of chairs. A few have been unscrewed and sit at angles, but Bellamy's shoved onto one that doesn't budge.

Figures. Who knows what a prisoner is thinking better than other prisoners?

Bellamy tries to get a last glimpse of the corridor beyond, but the door closes before he has much of a chance.

Beckett stands by it as the shadow man takes up his previous posture, resting a shoulder against the wall.

McCreary's boots against the floor and the hammering of Bellamy' heart is the only sound in the room, as McCreary takes the seat closest to Bellamy's own, one that isn't bolted. He flips it around and sits, straddling the chair between his legs. He watches Bellamy from over the back of the chair, eyes slightly narrowed, lips pressed in a thin line, as if trying to guess all the secrets Bellamy has, locked up inside.

Or maybe they're more bare than Bellamy knows, and this man is just debating on which wound to probe first.

 _He doesn't know me,_ Bellamy reminds himself, because the way this man looks at him makes Bellamy start to think that maybe he does. But he can't. Raven's bombs worked. Monty's coverage worked. It all worked, because if it didn't, it means his sister is dead, and he sacrificed his family's only advantage for a suicide mission.

"You don't have any questions for me? Who I am really? What it is I want?"

Bellamy's jaw tightens. _Wait,_ instinct chides. _Wait for the others._ Because right now he still has hope, and he won't let it fade without a fight, even if it is a quiet one, between him and the questions he refuses to let himself ask.

McCreary looses a muted sigh. His eyes meet Axl's from over Bellamy's shoulder and he flicks his gaze towards the door in a silent message Bellamy can't understand. A moment later, Axl melts from the room, slipping out the door, and Bellamy's spine goes cold.

McCreary returns his focus to him. Hedges his chair a bit closer.

"Now, I'm going to tell you a little story." McCreary leans forward, watching Bellamy like a hawk does its prey.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl who fell from the sky." He slowly sweeps his hand down through the air, to the steel tabletop. "And as she fell, her wings broke off, so she could no longer fly. Instead, she had to live on the ground."

That coldness in Bellamy's spine slips into the rest of him.

McCreary taps his fingers on the steel. "She wasn't alone, though. No, the girl had friends, and they spent a long time fighting to stay alive, even at the expense of others. Finally, they believed that after all their wars, after all the blood they shed, they would finally live in peace."

McCreary pulls something from his pocket, a small rectangular object that glints in the lowlight. He flicks it open, and with a swipe of his thumb, a small flame sparks from the top. McCreary stares at it, the fire dancing in his eyes like coals. "But then came the fire. A death wave, that devoured the world, and every living thing on it." His index finger drifts through the thimble of flame. "Some hid under the Earth. Others took to the sky again, borrowing old wings they found. But as for the girl . . ."

Bellamy grinds his teeth, trying to keep calm, because his nerves are suddenly jumbling around like marbles inside him. He's told enough stories to a little girl to know where this one leads. He helped write the end of this one himself.

"She could not take flight in time, and she was left behind to burn." McCreary shakes his head slowly. "But she didn't burn. She lived, because this girl had magic blood." McCreary looks back at Bellamy, letting the fire dance. "And every day, for two thousand, two hundred days, she would pull out her radio, and try to talk to her friends in the sky. But they could not answer her. They could not even hear her. Maybe, she thought, there were moments when they even forgot her completely."

Bellamy's hands tighten until the cuffs dig into his wrists, ordering himself to breathe through the anger shaking him on the inside.

"But she waited. And she waited. And she radioed, always hoping, always praying, always beginning the same way, speaking to the same friend in particular when she had more than one up there. Do you know what their name was?"

Bellamy's heart pounds as McCreary looks between the him the flame, as if contemplating which one to extinguish. "Bellamy," he whispers, and some distant part of Bellamy notes the sound of a door opening as that coldness starts to burn.

"Bellamy Blake." McCreary snaps the lighter closed and his gaze slides over to the noise of _hum_ and _scrape_.

Bellamy follows, blood frozen in his veins as he turns.

Axl enters. But then he fades away. Disappears like smoke, because behind him is someone shorter, with blonde hair and eyes the color of a sky he once doubted he'd ever see again.

All the air is sucked out of his lungs, and suddenly there is no worry, no fear, no ship full of criminals. There is no McCreary. There is just him and the fallen sky girl he buried prematurely, now standing close by, breathing, alive.

Clarke.


	9. Alive

**This one took longer to update for a few reasons: class, motivation, my desire to get it as realistic as possible, and fanfiction having a connection issue. I haven't edited this, so if there are any mistakes, please ignore them (I really just want to post this), but let me know what you think! Reviews make me happy.  
**

" _Ten minutes."_

The words echo back, across six years that suddenly condense into this single, glass moment.

" _We have to go."_

" _This is what Clarke would want us to do."_

Those final minutes slam into Bellamy like a tidal wave. He didn't realize how fuzzy they've become until now. It hits him right in the chest. It makes his eyes burn.

" _I left her behind."_

He relives it in a breath, just before those blue eyes slide to him.

And all those memories?

Oh, they explode.

Words and pieces and moments flood back with clarity sharp enough to cut him, bits he's forgotten of, bits he can't forget, even after the end of the world.

" _I need you, Bellamy."_

" _It had to be done."_

" _I don't want to be angry at you anymore."_

" _I can't lose you, too."_

A second of disbelief crosses Clarke's face. It's barely there at all. Then her lips part in shock. Those blue eyes go wide. She stills.

" _Come inside."_

" _I knew I could leave, because they had you."_

" _I trust you."_

" _You need me? You_ left _me."_

" _I left her behind."_

" _Together?"_

" _Together."_

The shock seems to wilt her. Or maybe it's relief, and Bellamy can see his name forming on her lips as surely as hers is on his, because this is so much more than he could have dreamed. She is alive and he is alive, and he doesn't even realize he's pulling at his restraints, desperate to touch her, to _feel_ her, to know she is real before he blinks and she disappears.

But she doesn't. She stays, her eyes locked on his, as the room around them disintegrates and it's just the two of them, taking each other in. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It's the first time Bellamy believes that everything he's done has been worth it, if it all meant being alive for this.

Clarke tugs at her arms and for some inexplicable reason that Bellamy will forever be grateful for, Axl _let's her go_. The sudden freedom surprises her and she stumbles, but she never takes her eyes off Bellamy's.

A few steps forward, and suddenly she drops to her knees in front of him and she is _there,_ with free hands she lifts to his face. She hesitate by his cheek, as if scared to touch him. But then she does. Her fingers first graze his cheek before dropping to the beard and a sound that's part-laugh, part-sob escapes her. It's a sound that Bellamy doesn't hear himself echo but he knows he does as her hand cups his cheek. Her blue eyes fill his view.

"Bellamy," she whispers. And despite all of it, she grins, the biggest smile he's ever seen.

He feels his lips mirror hers. Whatever words he's planned scatter. He wants to tell her everything but he can't when all of them seem to turn to dust. He searches her eyes, and the only thing he manages to get out is one word.

"Clarke."

A disbelieving breath. "You're . . . you're _alive_."

 _You sure about that?_ he almost says, because a part of him wonders. "Thanks to you." He can't stop his eyes searching her face.

A tear slips down her cheek and she shakes her head. Stares at him as if she's just as afraid he'll evanesce through her fingers. But then a small crease appears between her brows. Bellamy can practically hear the question forming in her mind.

"We're alive because of you," he adds quietly, so she knows. _The others are here. We're all okay. You saved all of us._

That crease vanishes, chased away by that smile. "I can't believe you're here. I thought . . ." The unspoken words hang between them.

"I'm sorry," tumbles from Bellamy, like air after being underwater for too long. He needs to say it, not because he regrets his decision, but because they both know he would make the same one again. He says it because the six years were long and lonely and hard, and because there were moments he needed to look across the room and see someone there who understood him without him having to speak a word. He says it for the moments he did regret it, for the nights he awoke angry at her sacrifice, angry at himself for her being the one to do it instead of him.

Clarke shakes her head again, hands pressed to his cheek. "No. Bellamy-"

Steps interrupt her, and a moment later Axl looms behind her crouched form. His hand seizes her forearm and he pulls her back. "No!" Bellamy snaps, pulling against his restraints, pressing himself into her touch just as her fingers leave his cheek.

She yanks at her own arm, gaze fastened on Bellamy's. "No, stop. Please!" Axl pulls her back to the other side of the room, by the door they entered from. He stands sentinel by her, as rigid as a statue.

Bellamy keeps his eyes on her until McCreary eclipses his view, like a shadow blotting out the sun. The room seems darker, all of a sudden. Bellamy's relief crumples at the edges, because he knows what men like McCreary like to do now. Bellamy knows, because hasn't he done it himself?

"You've made things . . . _easier_ . . . for me now, I think." He tosses a glance at Clarke from over his shoulder. "It's nice to have friends, isn't it?"

Bellamy doesn't even realize he's bitten his lip until the sharp tang of copper registers. He tries to pull everything he's shown back into himself, wrap it all back around the spool, but what he's shown can't be unseen. He can't rewind his relief. Can't pretend that the woman standing just beyond his line of sight is anything less than what she is: someone he would be captured for. Someone he would fight for. Someone he has mourned and missed and spent six years trying to prove that everything she did wasn't for nothing.

So Bellamy schools his features as best he can, but he suspects it still shows in his eyes, especially when the fading trace of a smile touches McCreary's lips. "See, Clarke here has been having some qualms about doing something for me. But I reason that if she wants to see you remain mostly intact, she'll concede."

Bellamy forces his eyes from over McCreary's shoulder to his eyes. Reminds himself to stay calm against the hurricane brewing inside, ready to sweep reason away. "Didn't seem to work much last time," he says, "if she's still giving you trouble."

McCreary smirks. "She won't do anything for us now, not without the girl."

Bellamy almost smiles. It's a victory at least. "Managed to lose her that quickly, huh?" he asks. He tilts his head to the side, baiting him. "You should watch your hostages more carefully."

McCreary doesn't take it. In fact, Bellamy's words might as well be water, effecting no change. "I figured it was you. You and your friends."

"It's good to have them."

The man nods slowly. He flicks his gaze back at Clarke before throwing it back at Bellamy, a ghost smile lingering there, like he knows something Bellamy doesn't. Only Bellamy does know. He knows what any person would in this situation, and it rids himself of his relief.

"What do you think, Clarke?" McCreary asks, stepping to the side just enough for Bellamy to see her again. She looks between him and McCreary, eyes still wet, expression . . . afraid. That alone is more unnerving than the silver lighter that McCreary retrieves once more and swipes his thumb across, letting the flame spring to life. He rifles something out of his breast pocket and pulls out something cylindrical. Lights the end of it on fire before capping the lighter shut. Pinching it between his fingers, he drags in a deep breath before exhaling out a cloud of smoke that turns the air acrid around Bellamy. "How far will we have to take this," he asks, "before you give me what I want?"

Clarke shoves forward but Axl holds her back. " _Don't._ Don't hurt him."

"I don't have to, not if you _do as I ask."_

Clarke's eyes go back to Bellamy, big and pleading. She shakes her head, almost imperceptibly, because she _is_ afraid.

McCreary pulls out the stub in his mouth. Swift as the smoke he breathes, he thrusts it forward until the lit tip is pressing against the skin just beneath Bellamy's jaw.

It's a moment before he feels it, and when he does, he has to press his lips together to keep the pain inside.

"Stop it!" Clarke shouts as heat blazes up Bellamy's neck. His hands turn to fists behind him. This is what it's like to be branded.

McCreary waits until the embers smolder. "I am a patient man, Clarke," he says. "But even I have my limit, and you don't want to see what happens when I reach it."

He pulls the stub away and Bellamy lets out a small breath.

McCreary relights the stub, but this time he doesn't put away the lighter. He keeps it out and lit, holding the thimble of flame close to Bellamy's face. He can feel the heat of it waft against his nose, until it becomes an uncomfortable tingle.

"What'll it be, Clarke?" asks McCreary.

Bellamy searches Clarke's face, as if expecting to find the reason for all this there. _What does he want you to do?_

"How are you sure I even know how to do it?" she asks, her voice calm despite the war in her eyes. " _I'm_ not even sure!"

McCreary pulls in another mouthful of smoke. Exhales again. "Wrong answer." And with that, he brings the lighter over the burn mark, close enough for the flame to lick at the raw skin.

This time, Bellamy can't bite back his choked gasp.

" _Stop!_ Stop hurting him!"

"Tell me what I want to hear, Clarke."

"What if-what if it goes wrong?" she asks, her voice desperate. "What if I can't do what it is you're asking me? What if I kill them instead?"

"If they die, he dies." A pause. "Very slowly."

The pain seems to set his bones on fire and another gasp slips through Bellamy's lips. "Don't, Clarke!" he pants. "Don't- don't give him whatever it is he's-asking for." Bellamy doesn't even realize he's trying to lean away from the lighter, from the pain, but there's nowhere to go tied down in a chair.

McCreary's face looms by him. "I suppose you think it's heroic of you for suggesting that, but you'll soon find that it's actually _very_ stupid."

"Please!" Clarke shakes her head, holding herself as far from Axl as he'll allow. "Just stop hurting him and I'll . . . I'll try it." Bellamy can barely hear her over the pain searing his neck. Sweat beads at his temples and spills down. Some of it touches the wound and makes it burn like acid.

"You don't sound very convincing," says McCreary. "I want you confident. I want you _sure._ "

'I'm sure you'll kill us both after you get what you want."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. I can promise you a swift death."

Clarke's eyes narrow, and this time, her voice isn't desperate; it's confident and sure. "If he dies, there's _nothing_ you can do that will make me help you. You'll stay leader to a frozen people and when the time comes that you become so desperate to free them, you'll be the one who drowns them instead."

McCreary straightens and pulls the lighter away, and it's like water down Bellamy's neck. He caps the lighter, but its flame seems to linger, burning in his eyes instead of between his fingers. "I believe you'll feel differently, maybe sooner than you think."

Turning his back to Bellamy, he approaches Clarke, and before Bellamy can shout something he really can't do anything about anyway, McCreary turns his words to Axl instead. "Return Clarke to the dock bay. Then call for Venson."

Bellamy can't see McCreary's face, but he can see Clarke's, and the way she blanches makes every muscle of his tense, because he can read it all in her eyes, even before she shakes her head, struggling for words, for anything that would pull the both of them out of this alive. "No, wait, I can . . . I'll try. _I'll try."_

McCreary pockets the lighter. "Of that, I have no doubt. Let's just consider this a little motivation, to help get you started."

Clarke pulls against Axl's hold, eyes flashing between him and Bellamy. "No! You don't have to do this!"

"It's a little late to try appealing to my conscience. Or has war taught you nothing?" He gestures with a tilt of his chin towards the door. "Take her."

"No," she tries to pry Axl's hold from her, but he is relentless. "No, just-"

A net of fear unravels inside Bellamy at the sight of her slipping away again. _Not again._ He just got her back.

"Clarke," he says. Her blue eyes burn into his. _We'll find a way._ He hopes he conveys the message. Hopes it looks more convincing than he feels, because he knows what will comes next. It won't be gentle. It never is. He just hopes it will be slow enough for the others to catch up, if they are to come at all.

A tear slides down Clarke's cheek. All traces of her earlier smile are gone. There are a thousand words in her eyes, but she only has time for three. "I'm sorry, Bellamy."

Then she's pulled from the room and into the corridor. The door slides shut behind them, and Bellamy is left with a sudden bomb of silence that seems to pulse with the throb of his burning neck. _We'll find a way, Clarke. We always do._

 _Not the last time,_ a small part reminds him. But last time had its mistakes, and unlike then, he won't be going anywhere without her. _We'll_ _find_ _a way_ , he thinks again, almost angrily. His neck burns. Exhaustion shakes his limbs. But he won't stop. This is where he doesn't give up, because now he knows Clarke's alive, after sacrificing everything she had to save them, and walk a burning world alone. She's alive, and she's here, and he is not leaving her behind again.

 _We'll find a way,_ he repeats, even as the door opens again and in steps a tall man, his hard face adorned in a motley of scars, eyes as kind as shards of glass.


End file.
